Maureen Gupta Chapter of Doctoral Dissertation, Revised September 2008 Léon Bakst and the Décor of The Sleeping Princess Introduction In July of 1921 Serge Diaghilev engaged his long-time collaborator, the stage designer and artist Léon Bakst (1866-1924), (fig. 1, self-portrait) to produce the sets, backdrops and drop curtain, and costumes for The Sleeping Princess. [1] The Ballets Russes production was based on the Chaikovsky/Petipa ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1890. Among the notable aspects of this new production – it was the first full-length Russian ballet presented in the West in the twentieth century, with principal roles danced by academy-trained Russian classical dancers [2] – is its unique place in the Ballets Russes repertory. Never before, and never after, did the Ballet Russes fill an entire evening with a late nineteenth-century Russian ballet. [3] Diaghilev had initiated his Saisons Russes in Paris in 1909 with operatic and balletic excerpts from larger works, as well as short one- or two-act ballets such as Le Pavillon d’Armide and Cléopâtre which had been adapted from earlier productions in St. Petersburg. [4] As his cadre of dancers, choreographers, stage designers, and composers developed, Diaghilev would typically offer three short, newly or recently composed ballets in a program. Always desiring to astonish, this cavalcade in itself constituted a spectacle. For The Sleeping Princess Diaghilev and his collaborators endeavored to create a different kind of spectacle, one sustained by a single work over the course of an evening or matinée. As the London Daily Mail reviewer wrote after The Sleeping Princess’s premiere, “This new ballet…out-splendours splendour,” [5] and indeed that was one of the goals of Diaghilev and Bakst for this production. By 1921 the Ballets Russes had dazzled audiences for over a decade; Bakst and his brilliantly colored, exotic designs for Cléopâtre, Shéhérazade, Le Dieu Bleu and others were in large measure responsible for the sensation created in Paris early on. In these short, modern works, Bakst’s aim was to capture the essence of a ballet. “From each setting,” he told art dealer and critic Martin Birnbaum in 1913, “I discard the entire range of nuances which do not amplify or intensify the hidden spirit of the fable.” [6] Bakst did indeed seek to capture the essence of Sleeping Beauty in his décor, but my analysis indicates that he moved beyond “intensify[ing] the hidden spirit of the fable” by casting The Sleeping Princess in a nostalgic, Symbolist-tinged rendering. His youthful admiration of the Chaikovsky/Petipa ballet, seen thirty years prior, was transformed through time and maturity into a vision that Bakst articulated throughout the ballet, with layers of allusions and illusions. 1		Fig. 1
	Insisting that the program include the phrase, “The entire production by M. Leon Bakst,” the designer undertook a complex set of décor requirements – all to be completed in about three months, from early August to early November 1921. The Sleeping Princess required five scenes [7] in two different time periods and approximately 270 costumes. These consisted of costumes for thirteen principals (and two costumes each for the Queen and King, Aurora, Cantalabutte [sometimes spelled Catalabutte], and Prince Charming, as he was named in the English program); over twenty costumes for the fairy tale divertissements in Scene V; costumes for the four foreign princes; and numerous other costumes for ministers, lords- and ladies-in-waiting, nurses, village maidens and youths, dukes and duchesses, marquises and marchionesses, beaters and huntsmen, baronesses, and nymphs; mazurka ladies and men; and lackeys, footmen, guards, and pages. Bakst rose to this daunting task and created the décor of the ballet through an extraordinary array of costumes and scenography, drawing some of the designs from earlier efforts. But significantly, Bakst envisioned his role in The Sleeping Princess as more than a supplier of designs for sets and costumes. The designer sought to create the mise-en-scène in numerous ways. In the large crowd scenes he paid attention to the effect created by careful massing of bodies and their colors. He altered the entry of the opening processional to enhance movement and direct the gaze of the audience. Throughout the backdrops for the five scenes, Bakst’s artistic vision changed from an emphasis on line to an emphasis on color, and finished with a linear backdrop. The backdrop for Scene I, the Christening, was architectural and formal and delineated the public christening and ceremonial giving of gifts to the baby Aurora. For Scene II, the Spell, Bakst created a softer milieu, a colonnaded garden in which Aurora receives her courtiers and pricks her finger on the spindle. Scenes III and IV, the Vision and the Awakening, were yet more atmospheric and intimate in Bakst’s depiction of a deep forest at twilight where the Lilac Fairy shows Prince Charming a vision of Aurora, and of Aurora’s rose-colored bedroom softened with curtains and bathed in moonlight. In Scene V Bakst returned to a linear scenography for another public ritual, the Wedding. Though there is no archival evidence specifying who chose the fairies’ new names, Bakst and/or his collaborators changed some of the fairies’ original names to those explicitly evoking aromas: Pine Woods, Cherry Blossom, and Carnation replaced Candide, Coulante or Fleur-de-Farine, and Miettes-qui-Tombe. The Fairy of the Mountain Ash (or Larch) was added and danced to the Fairy Lilac’s Variation in the No. 3 Pas de Six. The Fairy Humming Bird, or Colibri, replaced Violente (sometimes spelled Violante). The humming bird evoked flowers, nectar, and pollination, and Violente’s choreographic finger-pointing and brisk footwork could with little adaptation suggest the speed and darting motion of a humming bird. The Fairies Lilac and Canari-qui-chante (called Fairy of the Song-birds) remained the same. 2
	With his work in The Sleeping Princess, Bakst returned to the kind of over-arching role he had envisioned for himself when he wrote to art critic Huntley Carter around 1911 (fig. 2): Je crois que le temps où le régisseur faisit pluie et beau temps dans la mise en scène théâtrale est passé à jamais. „L’intelligence” cérébrale qui dominait il y a quelque quinzaine d’années au théâtre cède sa place à „l’intelligence” plastique et le „ton” de l’ensemble est décerné dorénavant (pour une longue période, il me semble) au peintre. L’évolution théâtrale penche vers un idéal plastique et l’action théâtrale parfois de belle inventive paraisse faible et peu impressionnante, si la „vue” n’a pas été frappé avant tout, d’une façon artistique; comme un tableau trop littéraire, répugne un vrai connoisseur. Donc – place au peintre au théâtre et place dominante! C’est le peintre, qui doit maintenant (comme auparavant le régisseur érudit) tout créer, tout savoir, tout prévenir et tout organiser. C’est au peintre d’être ferré des sciences archéologiques, modernistes, de comprendre la finesse de la „situation”; décider le style de la pièce; c’est à son goût plastique, que dorénavant seront subordonnés les mille détails, qui composent cet ensemble poignant et grandiose d’une belle oeuvre théâtrale. Fini le temps où le petit décorateur, ignorant et frère cadet parmi les roi de la palette, se soumettait aux absurditiés de mauvais goût les régisseurs lettres. C’est dans le cadre des artistes peintres de la plus haute intelligeance qu’on va récrutés maintenant ces chefs de tout oeuvre théâtrale qui évolutionne sans cesse et qui prend maintenant cette nouvelle forme. L’éra du réalisme théâtrale est fini – chaq’un [sic] le sent de plus en plus tous les jours. La pièce et son cadre sont pour moi un continuel changement d’un grand tableau uni par un style, qui rétraduit dans les moindre détails picturales, plastiques, voir phonétiques. Cette unité absolue doit être guidée par une intelligeance plastique avant tout, car il est maintenant plus évident que jamais qu’une interprétation théâtrale est avant tout, un art plûtot plastique, que littéraire. Autrement – à quoi bon? la scène, les gestes, les décors, costumes et les accéssoires – qui augmentent l’impréssion de la pièce, qui peut être lire très bien chez soi, sans théâtre! Continue to the NEXT PAGE 3		Fig. 2
	Comme dans un tableau – „le décor” ne peut pas avoir autres éléments de forme et de ton, que ceux qui lui sont adoptés spécialement pour une seule intelligeance plastique, qui réuni tout dans une harmonie parfaite. Adieu les décors faits pour un peintre soumis aveuglement à une partie seulement du travail[;] les costumes – par le premier venu couturier, qui apportent une note étrangère et fausse dans la mise en scène; adieu les gestes, les mouvements, le faux ton et cette terrible abondonce, purement littéraire, des détails, d’invention cérébrale nullement plastiques, qui font de la mise en scène moderne un assemblage de petites reformations sans la simplicité unique procédée d’une véritable oeuvre d’art. [I believe that the time has passed when the director called the shots in the theatrical mise-en-scène. The cerebral mind that dominated these past fifteen years in the theatre has ceded its place to the scenic mind, and responsibility is henceforth (and for a long time, it seems to me) given to the painter to set the “tone” of the entire production. The theatre is evolving toward an ideal form and at times theatrical action that is beautiful and inventive appears weak and unimpressive, if the concept is not striking in an artistic fashion; like an overly literary tableau that repulses a true connoisseur. So – here’s to the domination of the theatre painter! It is the painter who, like the erudite director previously, must now create all, know all, plan and organize everything. It is up to the painter to understand past approaches as well as modern ones, and know how to balance the two. It is the painter who must determine the style of the production. It is his scenic taste, previously submerged in a thousand details, that brings together the poignant and grandiose in a beautiful theatrical work. Finished is the time when the small decorator, ignorant younger brother of the kings of the palette, subjected himself to the absurdities of the learned directors’ bad taste. It is from the cadre of painters of the highest intelligence that will now be recruited the chiefs of the total theatrical work, that is evolving ceaselessly and that is now taking this new form. The era of realistic theater is finished – everyone feels this more and more every day. The play and its framework are for me a large painting, united by style but continually transformed by the smallest pictorial, scenic, or “phonetic” details. This absolute unity must be guided above all by a scenic mind, because it is now more evident than ever that a theatrical interpretation is more scenic than literary. Otherwise, what good are scenery, acting, décor, costumes and properties – which add so much to the impression of the play, and without which one might as well be reading at home? Like a painting, the décor cannot have elements of form and of tone, other than those chosen especially by a scenic mind that can unite all in perfect harmony. Goodbye to décors made by an artist blindly submitting only one portion of the work, to costumes made by old couturiers that add a strange and false note to the mise-en-scène. Goodbye to the acting, movements, false tone and this terrible abundance of purely literary detail invented by minds with no appreciation of the scenic, minds which make modern theatrical production an assemblage of small forms lacking the unique simplicity that characterizes a true work of art.] [8] In part this statement reflects Bakst’s efforts to promote his expertise; it also reflects his contempt toward “the bad taste absurdities of learned directors,” or those referred to as “snob aesthetes” at the time. But what Bakst wrote above probably reflects the reality of his experiences with the Ballets Russes, which in the early years were intensely collaborative efforts of Diaghilev and his Mir iskusstva colleagues. Bakst was deeply involved in developing the libretti for a number of early ballets. [9] As the decade progressed, Bakst became increasingly marginalized from new Ballets Russes productions, and Diaghilev favored French easel painters such as Picasso, Matisse, and André Derain. Bakst’s engagement for The Sleeping Princess represented a chance (his final chance, as it turned out) to create the “absolute unity guided by a scenic mind” in such a large-scale work. 4
	The challenge with The Sleeping Princess was not only that it was a massive ballet to produce, but also that it had been done before. Bakst’s approach to this ballet contrasted with prior Russian productions of full-length ballets in which different artists designed discrete pieces of scenery and costumes. Vladimir Telyakovsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres from 1901-17, recounted the practice with regard to décor of nineteenth century ballets at the Imperial Theatres, “Designers were divided according to their painting specialties: architectural, forest, marine, and other types of décor. These designers never did costume or prop design….When a new production was staged, the décors of the acts, painted by various designers, were assembled, as well as the costumes and props, executed according to the designs of Ponomarev, Vsevolozhsky himself [Telyakovsky’s predecessor], and others. The manner of execution, the tones, and colors – all of this differed in each act, often they didn’t suit each other at all, and it was impossible to gain a coherent impression from the entire production.” [10] In a 1910 interview, Diaghilev and Bakst expressed what was different about the Ballets Russes approach to scenography. “The French were the first to be astonished to learn from us that scenery does not have to represent an exterior or an interior but has to create the atmosphere, the artistic framework for the play,” said Diaghilev. Bakst continued, “I’ll tell you what the secret of the Russian ballet and its success is. The secret of our ballet lies in its rhythm. We have learned to convey, not feelings and passions as in the drama, nor form as in painting, but the very rhythm of feeling and form. Our dances and scenery and costumes – everything grips because it reflects the fleeting and secret rhythm of life. Our ballet appears as the synthesis of all the existing arts.” [11] In The Sleeping Princess, Bakst created rhythm by juxtaposing the large scale with the intimate, and neoclassical architectural spaces with romantic dreamscapes. He contrasted the painted illusion of space with a room actually constructed of stage properties. By manipulating the set and massed costume colors, and through his changing emphasis on line and then color, Bakst created a rhythmic flow that governed the scenic progression of events. This rhythm expressed the essence of The Sleeping Princess: the sense of flux that lies at the heart of the story and the music; the tug between good and evil, the fairy world and the terrestrial realm; and the disrupted order and authority in Florestan’s realm and its restoration. Bakst used visual imagery to guide the audience’s perceptions of the choreography and the music. As articulated in the letter to Carter, Bakst believed that “the ‘decor’ cannot have elements of form and colour… other than those specially chosen by a single scenic mind which unites everything in perfect harmony.” Through his control of the visual focus of the ballet, Bakst differentiated the formal, public moments that begin and end the ballet from its private and, in Bakst’s imagining, erotic core. It was through his décor that he consciously counteracted the essentially static nature of the ballet in which the entire story is foretold in the beginning, by imbuing the production with what he called “the very rhythm of feeling and form.” [12] 5
	Bakst’s intensely personal imprint was itself a reflection of his Russian Symbolist aesthetic. W. A. Propert noted the impression of Bakst’s individual style: “The production [of The Sleeping Princess] was in its way quite superb, and the ensemble worth of a Gala night in St. Petersburg….As for the decoration, one can safely say that nothing like it had been seen in our time, not only in its extent and disregard of cost, but above all in its endless invention and its sustained level of admirable taste…. these elements had been blended into so masterly a whole and sharpened with so personal a fantasy that the completed design was pure Bakst, and Bakst of the finest kind.” [13] Bakst’s concern with capturing what he saw as the essence of a work such as The Sleeping Princess, and his very personal interpretation, can be attributed to his aesthetic development in St. Petersburg during the heyday of the Russian Symbolist movement. In 1890, at the age of twenty-four, he experienced the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre. He met Diaghilev, Benois, and others and joined their private discussion group called the Nevsky Pickwickians. These friends along with others later formed the heart of the World of Art group, and its journal, Mir iskusstva, published from 1898-1904. [14] In the third part of his introductory essay “Complicated Questions” for the new journal, titled “In Search of Beauty” (1899), Diaghilev wrote of the relation between the artist’s imagination and his work: “Fantasy has to be clothed in flesh; only then will it be visible and understandable to others…. No one dares to insult the mystery involved in the relationship of the creator to his dream, but he must lead us into his kingdom and show us, clearly and in real terms, the images that without his help are hidden from us.” [15] In the fourth part of the essay, “Principles of Art Criticism” (1899), Diaghilev proposed that “we do not agree that a work of art is a piece of nature observed through temperament,” alluding to Emile Zola’s definition of art as “un coin de la création vu à travers un temperament [a piece of nature seen through a temperament].” Diaghilev preferred to invert the phrase. “Beauty in art is temperament expressed in images,” he continued, “and therefore it is not important in itself except as an expression of the personality of its creator….The highest expression of personality, irrespective of the form it takes, is beauty created by man. The artist is the all-embracing source of the innumerable artistic moments that we have experienced. Why, then, should we seek an explanation apart from him? It is surely a matter of indifference to us where he draws the inspiration for his work or in what outer form his thought takes shape.” [16] That Bakst’s mature work in The Sleeping Princess was so clearly described in these early expressions of Diaghilev and the World of Art group indicates the continuing effect of these early experiences on Bakst’s aesthetic principles. Like other Russian artists during this time, Bakst explored color and synesthesia. Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin attempted to evoke different colors through their orchestration, and some Russian Symbolist poets chose words to emulate musical sounds; Bakst infused some of his décors with “visual” aromas. [17] In The Sleeping Princess, the attributes of the fairies emulate the smells – and sounds – of spring. The interpolation of the Arabian (coffee) and Chinese (tea) variations from The Nutcracker into the Scene V divertissements also added aroma. Bakst accentuated or included other important themes from Russian Symbolism in his décor. One of these was a heightened awareness of boundaries between worlds, twilight and transformation, evidenced in Bakst’s treatment of the Vision and the Awakening scenes with their emphasis on mood and saturated color. Bakst’s adaptation of baroque scenographic models and court ballet costumes was an aspect of retrospectivism, another important Symbolist concern. The influence of Russian Symbolist debates regarding Apollonian versus Dionysian aesthetics in poetry, philosophy, and art can be seen in Bakst’s contrasts between the austerity of line versus the intense emotions represented by color. There are other ways that Bakst’s treatment of the décor reflects Russian Symbolist aesthetics: his reference to St. Petersburg’s Bronze Horseman in the Vision scene and the poetic themes it evokes; and the sexual imagery in the Awakening that recalls poet Aleksandr Blok’s cult of the Beautiful Lady. 6
	For Bakst, the opportunity to create the décor for The Sleeping Princess meant revisiting his own past, the imperial St. Petersburg of thirty years prior, when he had been a struggling artist yet to receive a stage commission. As the 1890 Chaikovsky/Petipa production of The Sleeping Beauty was itself retrospectivist, using the court of the Sun King as a metaphor for Russian monarchy and Aurora as the dawn of the Russian ballerina, [18] so too was Bakst’s Symbolist conception retrospectivist. He recalled the city of his youth from which he had been cut off, having been expelled from St. Petersburg in 1912 for being Jewish. [19] Further, the Revolution of 1917 swept away the world in which The Sleeping Beauty had been conceived. Bakst’s décor, with its many allusions to Russian Symbolism, was a profound comment on what had disappeared, as well as on the very process of disappearing. As the philosopher and theologian Vasilii Rozanov wrote, “The essence [of Symbolism] is precisely…in the discovery of things invisible, or rather and still better: in the covering, the ‘vesting’ of things invisible. Everything is ‘vested’ in robes and history itself is the enrobement of invisible, divine plans.” [20] Rozanov’s definition of Symbolism is particularly à propos because for Bakst, his costumes for The Sleeping Princess were a literal vesting of bodies, many of them representing symbols – of youth and dawn, of monarchy, of fairy attributes – and his historicizing was both retrospectivist and nostalgic. By 1921 avant-garde artists in Europe were exploring dadaism, expressionism, and constructivism. Bakst was ill at ease with those trends. But given free reign in a ballet he understood, he guided all aspects of the décor of The Sleeping Princess with a sure hand. It was the culmination of his artistic career, yet at the time it was deemed a meaningless spectacle. [21] It was Bakst’s misfortune to present a revival of a major work of art expressed in a Symbolist sensibility, at a time in which that sensibility had passed. 7
	Bakst’s Program Essay, “Tchaikovsky at the Russian Ballet” The extensive essay Bakst contributed to The Sleeping Princess souvenir program, “Tchaikovsky at the Russian Ballet,” set the stage, as it were, for the designer’s interpretation of the ballet. The essay touched on predominant elements of Bakst’s production: the play of colors amidst a setting of splendor, a nostalgic memory to his own attendance the 1890 dress rehearsal in St. Petersburg, his retrospective use of Baroque and French models of décor, and enchantment with a dream world. He began his essay with a remembrance of The Sleeping Beauty: It dates one. Twenty-five years and more have elapsed since those days. But let us not dwell upon them! My cheek was smooth, but already I worshipped the theatre. The ardently expected dress rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty,” fell upon a murky and cold November afternoon. But when one is very young, what matters the weather? Especially with a complimentary ticket in my pocket from my old and venerable friend, the chief stage-manager of the Imperial Opera. Before entering the auditorium, already swarming with people, custom ordained a visit to the stage-manager’s room, where he – a veritable pasha, with his Methusalem-like white beard and a Persian cap upon his head – smoked and drank his perpetual glass of tea in this club, wherein gathered the stars of the opera and the ballet. Everybody loved to gossip in this vast apartment! This visit has remained in my memory all my life. My rubbers quickly doffed and the snow shaken from my fur coat, I stand, nonplussed. Dare I enter? At the end of the sumptuous, Persian-carpeted room, through the crowd of dancers in daintily puffed-out skirts, I saw in outline two central figures, and, from the respectful distance kept by the artists, I gathered that they were personages of importance. One of them – tall, slightly bent, with an aquiline nose, and a smile at once affable and sly, wore the Star of the Vladimir order on the left breast of the blue uniform he wore as director of the Imperial theatres. “There must be a member of the Imperial family in the theatre,” I thought, not without pride at finding myself in such a brilliant assembly. (As it transpired, the Emperor Alexander III was there.) The other gentleman was shorter. His hair and beard were white, his complexion very pink, his manner shyly amiable. He appeared very nervous, but was making a visible effort to control himself. Who is it? I sought to catch the eye of my old friend, who at last saw me (I was then far from tall), hemmed in among the frothy mass of fluttering ballet-skirts. “Lovushka (Little Leon), come here and let me introduce you to our glory and pride, Piotr Ilytch Tchaikovsky.” Blushing with emotion in my tight uniform as a student of the School of Fine Arts, but wearing white gloves – so smart, I thought – with my carroty, close-cropped hair, I must have looked funny. Boldly escaping from my pleasant prison, without hesitating, I stepped forward and held out my hand to the famous musician. “Here he is,” continued the old régisseur “this youngster adores the theatre and is already painting scenic designs. The other day, whilst telling some friends at tea about your ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ he improvised scenery in his own way. Where is it now?” And he sought in vain in the drawer of his desk. “I like the music of ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’” I exclaimed in a voice strangled with emotion, amidst the general stupefaction, which was quickly followed by a mad outburst of laughter. “Ah! You already know my ballet?” laughingly said Tchaikovsky with surprise, and looking inquiringly at the patriarchal beard of the stage manager. Unforgettable matinée! I lived in a magic dream for three hours, intoxicated with fairies and princesses, splendid palaces flowing with gold, in the enchantment of the old tale. My whole being was as if swayed [sic] in cadence to the rhythms, the radiant flow of refreshing and beautiful melodies, which were already friends. But what a home-coming! What a cruel ending to the enchantment! Outside, a darkness grown murkier after all this bedazzling; snow, stinging horribly; an icy wind from the Neva; vain efforts to find a droshky (too expensive near the theatre), and, at last, home: the lamp with its depressingly commonplace petrol, suspended too high. Ah! what a contrast with the Marinsky Theatre, all decorated in blue velvet, filled with brightly clad officers of the Guard, with ladies in evening dresses, bejeweled and radiant, with a heterogeneous and perfumed crowd, in which a more solemn note was struck by the red coats and white stockings of the court, so bedizened with imperial eagles. That evening, I believe, my vocation was determined. [22] 8
	Bakst placed his evocation of Russian Imperial grandeur in the program to impress his audience and prepare them for the spectacle about to unfold. His description may also have been meant to appeal to Londoners’ nostalgic memories of the Coronation Gala at Covent Garden (June 26, 1911), in which Diaghilev’s troupe performed part of Le Pavillon d’Armide. The prewar extravaganza featured an assemblage of royalty (including the King and Queen of England and the Aga Khan), jewels (Queen Mary wore the Cullinan diamond and the Star of Africa), Peers, Orders, and all in a theatre festooned with thousands of roses and orchids. [23]Also, Bakst’s recollection of the Mariinsky audience mirrored his own conception of Scene I, based on the colors gold, red, and blue. A prominent blue velvet canopy over the baby Aurora’s crib and the blue cloaks of the King and Queen with long trains accent the gilt of Bakst’s backdrop. Royal blue, pale sky-blue, and peacock blue were the prominent colors of many of the costumes of royal attendants, such as the Queen’s Pages, the Lackeys, and the King’s Herald. Bakst replicated the “red coats and white stockings of the court” in the painted guards standing at attention in distant staircases, as well as in the onstage costumes for the Negro Footmen. Noted The Dancing Times, “When…all was prepared for the entrance of the fairies, it was found that on the left of the stage facing the royalties were the bright red and scarlet costumes, while on the king’s side all was blue and white.” [24] Bakst’s mention of imperial eagles in his program note was significant. One of the important symbols that Bakst intended to include in the ballet was the massive, three-dimensional eagle perched above Aurora’s bed during the Awakening scene. In his program essay Bakst conjured a Symbolist haze around his nostalgic memory, and he linked Chaikovsky’s music to the “Slav soul.” Bakst portrayed his heady intoxication with The Sleeping Beauty in sensual terms of color, light, sound, and aroma. He deliberately contrasted the dazzling with the murky, a world of dreams with harsh reality, and the commonplace with the noble. These were frequent subjects of Russian Symbolist poets and novelists during the fin-de-siècle, though not explicitly part of Petipa’s libretto. [25] The tone of Bakst’s impressions of The Sleeping Beauty bears a close resemblance to this excerpt from Baudelaire’s Richard Wagner and Tannhäuser in Paris (1861). I remember that, from the first measures, I experienced one of those happy impressions that almost all imaginative men have known in dreams when they were asleep. I felt myself freed from the bonds of weight, and in memory I recaptured the extraordinary pleasure which floats about heights….Next, involuntarily, I imagined to myself the delightful state of a man gripped by a great dream in absolute solitude, but a solitude with an immense horizon and filled with a vast diffused light: an immensity with no décor except itself. Soon I experience the sensation of a brighter light, of an intensity of light increasing so quickly that none of the nuances furnished by the dictionary would suffice to express this always renascent increase of brilliance and whiteness. Then I had the full realization of a soul moving in a luminous milieu, of an ecstasy composed of pleasure and knowledge, and soaring above and far away from the natural world. [26] Like Baudelaire, Bakst described being transfixed by the “radiant flow of refreshing and beautiful melodies, which were already friends,” and he “lived in a magic dream” of intoxication. The inspiration for Bakst was the music of Chaikovsky rather than that of Wagner. [27] “In Tchaikovsky…this ‘Muse,’ is…very human, sensitive and high-strung, sometimes in tears, and also madly dancing – in short, the Slav soul, is it not?.... it is a joy, and a delight, to build up in our clan, hardened as it is by continual conflicts, this homage to the great musician who succeeded so well in reflecting the Russian soul.” And in the closing paragraph of his essay Bakst asserts that the genius of Chaikovsky’s music and the splendor of the Russian monarchy inspired his décor: “Well, for me, a painter, true greatness is revealed in this ballet of ‘The Sleeping Beauty.’ The musician has had no recourse to pasticcio, which might seem obligatory in treating the period of Louis XIV. No. Tchaikovsky remains here, as elsewhere, Russian in spite of all. But, through the absolutism of Alexander III, with its pomp and splendour, Tchaikovsky’s genius impels our thoughts to the broad decorative lines of the seventeenth century and the magnificence of the Roi-Soleil.” [28] Here, Bakst hints at his borrowings from the Bibienas as well as other decorative motifs from the Sun King. Yet in his essay he also shows his aesthetic disdain for those who slavishly follow the latest trends, like the “futuro-cubist, always hailing from the ranks of unsuccessful engineers.” In many ways Bakst’s décor for The Sleeping Princess was both a rapprochement with his Russian past and a re-assertion of his aesthetic principles, which were founded in the Russian Symbolist movement. 9
	Bakst and the Russian Symbolist Movement Bakst’s exposure, as a spectator, to The Sleeping Beauty came near the beginning of his artistic career, and his contribution as an artist for The Sleeping Princess came near its end. In between were his formative experiences primarily in Russia with the Nevsky Pickwickians, Diaghilev and the World of Art group, and his prominence attained subsequently with the Ballets Russes in the West from 1909 forward. Prior to the Ballets Russes, Bakst participated in the many aesthetic debates among those artists, primarily writers, who constituted the first and second wave of Russian Symbolists. [29] Writing toward the end of Symbolism as a movement in Russia, the poet Andrei Bely (pseudonym of Boris N. Bugaev, 1880-1934) identified the prime outside sources that had influenced Russian Symbolists: “Two patriarchs of the ‘symbolist movement’ engraved with their whole life and work the postulates (lozungi) of the new art in the literature of the second half of the nineteenth century; these patriarchs are Baudelaire and Nietzsche.” [30] Many of the important themes of those two writers were assimilated and re-interpreted into the essays, lectures, and writings of Russian aesthetes. Bakst’s approach to The Sleeping Beauty reflects a number of these themes, which included correspondences between realms of consciousness, attention to the synesthetic attributes of color, and the Apollo/Dionysus dichotomy. The retrospectivist aspect of Bakst’s décor was also an important part of Russian Symbolist movement. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the young Russian writers and artists who had come to be known as “decadents” were fascinated by the poetry of the French and Belgian Symbolists, Baudelaire in particular. [31] Bakst’s first serious study of this poetry may have taken place during his participation in the Nevsky Pickwickian group. Our views on art at that period [wrote Benois] were distinctly influenced by Charles Birlé, a young official at the French Consulate. He had been introduced to me in 1892….Our company proved congenial to him, for he had no interest in his work and was at heart a real artist. In fact, he was the same kind of art-maniac as Somov, Bakst and myself. It very soon became evident that not only could we give Birlé the atmosphere he was pining for, but that he too could be extremely “useful” to us….He worshipped impressionism – Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat – about whom our knowledge had been extremely vague before meeting him. In poetry he gave the first place to Mallarmé, Verlaine and Baudelaire, whom we again knew only by name (Les Fleurs du Mal was prohibited in Russia). Birlé also subscribed to a number of advanced reviews and magazines, like Le Mercure de France, La Plume and La Revue Blanche. Birlé’s views and opinions were far from being mature – in fact, the most contradictory ideas seemed to exist in his mind – but it was perhaps this that drew us towards him. [32] Although the official censor prohibited the publication of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, individual poems from that volume had been translated into Russian since the 1860s (perhaps Benois was not aware of this). Bakst and the others were fluent in French and thus would have read any poetry and journals Birlé sent their way in the original language. But translations played an important role in the re-interpretation of Baudelaire’s poetry, as Wanner shows through comparative analysis, according to the aesthetic goals of the translator. Dmitri Merezhkovsky (1865-1941), a founding Symbolist writer who with his wife Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) was later involved with Mir iskusstva, translated and published several of Baudelaire’s prose and verse poems in the 1880s. By the mid 1890s Valerii Briusov (1873-1924) published three compendia containing his own poems interspersed with new translations of poetry by French and Belgian Symbolists. 10
	In tandem with Russian encounter with French Symbolist poetry was an upsurge of interest in the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. Discussions of his work, in the form of lectures and publications, began in the year of Sleeping Beauty’s premiere, and continued through 1909-10 when Bakst began working steadily in the West. Pyman notes two sources generating interest in Nietzsche in 1890: “[Nikolai] Minsky is often credited with the introduction of Nietzschean ideas to Russia on the strength of ‘Starinnyi spor’ [his philosophical tract, By the Light of Conscience, 1890] but this is not how his contemporaries saw it. Hippius says it was Prince Urusov who concentrated the attention of the literary elite on the ideas of the German philosopher in a talk given in 1890 when, according to Viacheslav Ivanov, ‘everyone was beginning to discuss Nietzsche.’ ” [33] One aspect of Nietzschean philosophy that resonated with artists and writers was the fin-de-siècle feeling of an era coming to a close; this merged with the feeling of some Russian Symbolist decadents of the kind of decay and putrefaction expressed in many of the Fleurs du Mal poems. In 1892 Merezhkovsky gave a lecture titled “The Reasons for the Decline and the New Currents in Contemporary Russian Literature” in both St. Petersburg and Moscow published a book of essays under the same title a year later. This sentiment was expressed famously in a 1905 speech by Diaghilev at a banquet given in his honor: “I can say boldly and with conviction that whosoever is certain that we are witnessing a great historical moment of reckoning and ending in the name of a new, unknown culture is not mistaken – a culture that has arisen through us, but will sweep us aside. And hence, with neither fear nor doubt, I raise my glass to the ruined walls of the beautiful palaces, as I do to the new behests of the new aesthetics.” [34] Another aspect of Nietzschean philosophy was analyzed in 1896 by the writer Akim Volynsky (1863-1926) in his article titled “Apollo and Dionysus” in Severnyi Vestnik (Northern Herald). [35] Others took up the idea of such a duality. In 1902 the Symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) published a volume of poetry, Guiding Stars, in which the poetry was divided into cycles. One entire cycle concerned the theme of Dionysus. Many of the Symbolist debates took place in Mir iskusstva (1898-1904), as well as in the other journals and publishing houses active in Moscow and Petersburg during this time and Bakst was actively engaged in these activities. [36] The artist, who had studied with the Finnish painter Alfred Edelfelt (1854-1905) in Paris from 1893-96, returned to St. Petersburg as Diaghilev began organizing his art exhibitions at the Stieglitz Museum (in St. Petersburg) and contemplating the journal which would become Mir iskusstva. [37] In Mir iskusstva, as in other journals and compendia, the fine arts were often considered in conjunction with the literary arts. The following demonstrates how artists and writers collaborated in one Mir iskusstva issue: “For Vol. V, No. 4 [April, 1901], [Diaghilev] planned a novelty – a set of poems with illustrations, which would tax the fantasy and graphic powers of his collaborators to the utmost. Ten pages of poems by Merejkovsky would be adorned by Lancerey and Bilibine; four pages of Sologub’s poems would be decorated by Benois; drawings by Lancerey and Bakst would illustrate respectively the verses of Hippius and Balmont; while Minsky would be interpreted by Lancerey.” [38] 11
Fig. 3 Fig. 4	Mir iskusstva paid attention to both the Muscovite school of Neonationalists and the St. Petersburg group of graphic artists, who were also editors and illustrators of the journal. [39] As Acocella writes, “the Neonationalists were oil painters, while the St. Petersburg group favored pen-and-ink, watercolor, and gouache…. These preferences say a great deal about the style and tone of the two schools. Oil was consistent with the artistic temperament of the Muscovites: their vigorous experimentalism, their “peasant” vitality, their connection with the hopeful and visionary aspect of Symbolism. And the graphic arts were consistent with the Petersburgers’ refinement, their nostalgia, their alliance with the disappointed, fin-de-siècle wing of Symbolism.” [40] Bakst, the future colorist, labored in the black and white milieux of graphic design, layout, and photographic retouching for Mir iskusstva and the Yearbook of the Imperial Theatres (1899-1900) edited by Diaghilev. One of Bakst’s more important designs from that period was the colophon of the journal, an eagle atop a snowy mountain signifying the lofty nature of art, which appeared in 1898-99. This symbol, altered, would appear later in Sleeping Princess. In their work on Mir iskusstva and the Yearbook of the Imperial Theatres, Bakst and Diaghilev established early on in their collaborative relationship a commitment to quality, no matter the expense. Mir iskusstva was costly to produce and Diaghilev did not stint with illustrations and reproductions done on high quality art paper interleaved with heavy cream paper. Some engraving was sent out to Germany because the technology was not available in Russia. Bakst himself spent many hours obsessively retouching the backgrounds of photographs until the desired effect was achieved. Under Diaghilev’s aegis the Yearbook for 1899-1900 became a lavish work elevated far above its usual humdrum level. The edition impressed St. Petersburg and reportedly even the Emperor, but it ran 10,000 rubles over its budget of 20,000 rubles and Diaghilev was not asked to manage the next year’s annual. [41] Bakst’s taste for an unusual use of rich colors began to emerge with his involvement in theatrical design, which began a few years before the close of Mir iskusstva. Three of his first theatrical commissions were for the Alexandrinsky Theatre’s productions of Hippolytus, Oedipus at Colonnus and Antigone in 1902 and 1903. Merezhkovsky translated from the ancient Greek; the new translations reflected the Symbolist fascination with classical Greek culture. [42] As André Levinson pointed out in his 1923 biography of Bakst, in the production of Hippolytus “the young stage director, Osarovsky, hoped to make a grand coup. The play was translated by Merejkovsky in exceedingly beautiful verse and with an extremely intense modern feeling. Among the Russian intellectuals of that time, Nietzschean ideas were held in great fascination. Now, in this early masterpiece the philosopher had transfigured the whole conception of the spirit of the ancients. Under the marble-like and placid guise of the Greece of Apollo’s time he had revealed the Dionysiac ecstacy, the pathetic distress and the mystic impulse of the masses.” Levinson commented further on Bakst’s strong colors, especially in Oedipus at Colonnus: “The garments were brightcolored; the purple robe of Creon was resplendent with its ornamentation copied from Ionian pottery.” [43] In 1906 Bakst designed a new curtain for the Vera Komisarzhevsky Theatre, which had been opened by the actress in 1904; Bakst’s curtain was a view of Elysium influenced by his 1905 trip to Greece with his friend and fellow painter Valentin Serov. [44] Opening the 1906 season at the Komisarzhevsky Theatre, Vsevolod Meyerhold directed a Symbolist version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. The décor, by Bakst, was completely white and chosen so as to set off the characters, each of whom was symbolized by a color. The fascination of many Symbolists with ancient Greek culture sharpened a debate in which the Apollo/Dionysus construct became a way of framing questions and examining issues regarding the nature of literature and fine art. The polemics peaked around 1909-10 as aesthetes advocated one approach over the other; Bakst’s writings and oeuvre from that time show how important these issues were to him. In the Symbolist journal Apollon, begun in 1909 after the demise of Vesy, a new group of prose writers and poets used architectural metaphors to prescribe the goals of a clear line, perspective, and proportion in place of mysticism and vagueness. In his essay, “On Beautiful Clarity: Notes on Prose,” Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936) advocated precision, logic, and consistency of genre in what he termed Clarism. The ideas of this influential article were later incorporated into the Acmeist movement of poetry. Bakst and Benois both contributed articles addressing art. Benois’s essay, in the inaugural issue of Apollon, was “In Expectation of a Hymn to Apollo.” Bakst’s lengthy essay in the second and third issues of Apollon was titled “The Paths of Classicism in Art”; it was reprinted as “Les Formes Nouvelles du Classicisme dans l’Art” a year later in La Grande Revue. In his essay Bakst advocated a return to child-like simplicity and “un style lapidaire,” based on the ancient Greek notion of physical beauty. “Les éléments de la peinture récente étaient l’air, le soleil et le feuillage; ceux de la peinture future sont l’homme et la pierre,” he wrote. [45] In contrast with the stiff, mannered style of Bakst’s essay propounding Apollonian restraint and simplicity is this 1909 description by Benois of his friend’s Dionysian infatuation with Greek art: “Bakst is completely taken with Greece; one must really hear the infectious enthusiasm with which he speaks of it…and one must see him at the Antiquities Departments of the Hermitage and the Louvre, pedantically copying the ornamental designs and the details of the costumes and the furnishings, to realize that what we have here is more than a superficial historical craze. Bakst is obsessed with ancient Greece, he is delirious about it and that is the only thing he can think of.” [46] Bakst’s art spoke louder than his pronouncements on the page, and his predictions regarding the future of painting did not come to pass. In his theatre work Bakst veered toward the Dionysian. This is seen in his first triumphs for Diaghilev’s Saisons Russes, the Orientalist décors seen in Cléopâtre (1909) and Schéhérazade (1910) with their orgies of color, pattern, and sexual suggestion. As he admitted to his fellow artist and one-time pupil Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva in St. Petersburg, “I myself am head over ears in colours, and don’t want to hear a word of black and white; I plan, on my return [from Paris], to convert both Kostia and Shura [Somov and Benois] to the “painterly” faith, and you too, of course, my dear Anna Petrovna. I have noticed that it is easier to sense and synthesize form through the medium of colour, which makes it more authentic and real.” [47] Bakst’s use of the term “painterly” was an allusion to the Muscovite style that emphasized color and mood. In contrast was the style of St. Petersburg artists that emphasized clarity of line and often featured architectural subjects. Benois, for example, was known for his articles and paintings devoted to St. Petersburg architecture, and had for some years extolled the neoclassical architecture of the capital city and its derivation from European models. Though Bakst was through proximity part of the Petersburg group of artists and writers, his own predilection for color placed him on the Dionysian side. Through his experience working with Diaghilev in Paris, Bakst realized that he could “synthesize form through the medium of colour,” that is, create large-scale forms in a backdrop by substituting masses of color for large linear shapes. This is apparent in comparing his scenography for Cléopâtre (1909) with that of Schéhérazade (1910). In the earlier ballet Bakst used perspective and scale to establish the illusion of space. (fig. 3) The massive pink statues on either side (probably side cloths) lead the eye toward rows of low, heavy columns that open onto the Nile. The sky at dusk was a heavy purple. In Schéhérazade (see fig. 4) Bakst created theatrical space by juxtaposing saturated oranges, blues, and greens that contrasted and vibrated. Bakst’s richly patterned costumes then became in a sense moving parts of the scenery. As Bakst wrote to Diaghilev in 1911, “the whole essence of my designing for the theater is based on the most calculated arrangement of patches of color against the background of a set with costumes which correspond directly to the physique of the dancers.” [48] Art historian Huntley Carter gives the following description of Bakst’s décors: Perhaps it is the introduction of M. Bakst’s system of colour arrangement that individualises “Cleopatra” and “Scheherazade” and makes a new departure in stage decoration. It is the imagination and strength of M. Bakst’s colour that distinguishes his work and places him with the greatest Russians of the day….Take the arrangement of his coloured figures, for example. He places a number of pure, fresh colours on the stage. The colours are first placed in order of their relationship to each other, and thereafter arranged according to a complete gradation of tints….Then he sets all these reds and yellows and blues and greens revolving. The effect is indescribable. The whole scene begins to pulsate. The walls and floor clothe themselves with designs of perfectly combined rhythmical lines. Masses move in all direction according to a law of ordered disorder. The air becomes dense with a quivering sheen of colour so violently contrasted, yet so harmonious.[49] 12
	André Levinson described Bakst’s décor for Schéhérazade as evoking a “vision filled with potent and mysterious charms…. the ethereal aroma of perfumes from a gripping fairy tale secret, and the color language of a completely different order.” [50] Benois mentioned that “Spicy, sensuous aromas seem to be wafted from the stage, but the soul is filled with foreboding.…It is difficult to imagine an exposition of drama more…to the point than Bakst’s décor.” [51] Bakst himself spoke his association of colors with particular emotions: I have often noticed that in each color of the prism there exists a gradation which sometimes expresses frankness and chastity, sometimes sensuality and even bestiality, sometimes pride, sometimes despair. This can be felt and given over to the public by the effect one makes of the various shadings. That is what I tried to do in Scheherazade. Against a lugubrious green I put a blue full of despair, paradoxical as it may seem. There are reds which are triumphal and there are reds which assassinate. There is a blue which can be the color of St. Madeleine, and there is a blue of Messalina….It is in line as well as in color that I make my emotions….My method is generally to take a simple motif and vary it indefinitely, so as to create a harmony of color and line. [52] In 1910 Bakst was embarking on a new journey as theatrical designer for the Ballet Russes, while he was simultaneously in the process of disengaging from the world of Russian art. Yet what he carried with him were his formative experiences in the milieu of Russian Symbolism. Bakst never described explicitly his own aesthetic as Symbolist, and neither did any of his reviewers or critics in the West. His early efforts for the Ballets Russes showed his concern for color and its ability to stimulate other senses such as aroma and emotion or mood. In 1909-10 we note the seeming contradiction of Bakst’s invocation of Apollonian, classical principles with the praxis of his Dionysian décors, the kind of contradiction acknowledged by some writers as representing two sides of a coin rather than mutual exclusivity. As the Symbolist Viascheslav Ivanov wrote in 1910 in Apollon, in “This same dualism of day and night….both worlds…are together in poetry. Now we call them Apollo and Dionysus, we know their infusibility and inseparability, and we sense in every true creation of art their effective dual unity.” [53] Like many of the Symbolist poets around him, Bakst was living his art. 13
	Bakst and the Rothschild Panels (1913-1922) Prior to The Sleeping Princess, there were two occasions where Bakst had considered the fairy tale The Sleeping Beauty. The first was a set of mural panels commissioned for the London residence of James de Rothschild. This commission was scarcely begun before the interruption of WWI, and was not completed until after The Sleeping Princess had premiered. The other project involved the designs for Anna Pavlova’s production of her own truncated version of The Sleeping Beauty in New York, in 1916, and is treated separately below. Because the Rothschild commission overlapped with Bakst’s theatre work for Pavlova and Diaghilev on the same subject, the paintings yield important insight into Bakst’s thinking with regard to the fairy tale.[54] Bakst received this unexpected commission of mural work partly as a result of his 1913 exhibition at the London Fine Art Society. Rothschild’s interests lay with golf and horse racing and he himself knew nothing of art, but he had purchased a townhouse in London and wanted custom panels for his drawing room. A friend directed his attention to the exhibition that had coincided with the Ballets Russes’ season in London. When invited to choose a theme for the murals, Bakst suggested The Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Appropriate to a residential setting, Bakst conceived the seven Rothschild panels in a painterly rather than theatrical style. The themes of each panel were: the curse of the Bad Fairy, the spell of the Good Fairy, the Princess pricks her finger, the King pleads with the Good Fairy to save his daughter, the court sleeps for a hundred years, the Prince spies the castle while hunting, and the Princess is awakened with a kiss. [55] In Bakst’s allegorical depiction, important elements of the story were articulated through plane perspective and variety in painterly focus. It is quite likely that Bakst sketched the sequence and physical layout of the seven panels at the beginning of the commission, though dated sketches are not extant. Fig. 5 shows an example of one undated preliminary sketch, of the moment when the Princess pricks her finger. The reasons delaying Bakst’s completion of the commission were myriad: illness (Bakst spent most of 1915 convalescing in Switzerland from depression; Rothschild fought in the war and later lost an eye), the disruptions of the war, Bakst’s other commissions (including the one for Pavlova), and changes in decorators and houses. In a letter from 1917 to Edmond de Rothschild’s homme d’affaires, Gaston Wormser, Bakst reported on the delays he encountered producing the panels: It troubles me to know that you must wonder when these panels will be finished. But really this winter, without any way of heating the studio [in Paris], I have decided, reluctantly, to tell myself I will start work again in the summer on this, my main commission. I have done some portraits and I am also working here [Rome] on an eighteenth-century Italian ballet [Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur, premiered April 12, 1917], with music by Scarlatti (the subject is Goldoni). This Ballet Russe (!!?) will be on in Paris at the end of April – the time when I myself will be back there. In May, I will give all my time to these panels, and by June you will be able to see good progress. If nothing stops me I will work until the cold weather comes back and then I will be able to leave for Italy to rest. These are my complete and frank plans, dictated by these extraordinary events, including the total lack of coal. Who would have thought that this rough material would obstruct the creation of a work of art![56] 14		Fig. 5
Fig.6 Fig.7 Fig.8 Fig.9 Fig.10 Fig.11 Fig.12 Fig.13 Fig.14 Fig.15	It was planned, at the request of the client, to insert portraits of Rothschild family members and their friends, as well as their pet papillon (and Bakst painted himself into the first panel). Due to the unavailability of the actual models during wartime, Bakst in frustration sketched and painted the scenes first and left the faces to be filled in later. A number of faces and nude studies from 1918 were used in the panels (fig.6) and (fig.7). There were other faces sketched in 1921 (fig.8) and (fig.9). Bakst returned to Paris just before the opening of The Sleeping Princess in November of 1921, and it appears that he completed much of the actual painting then. The dates of the intermediate stages of the panels are unknown. Three of the seven panels were dated 1922 and thus completed after the The Sleeping Princess ballet; the other four were undated. However, as a set the panels were not fully executed until 1922, and because of various delays and a cessation of correspondence it is not clear exactly when they were shipped and finally installed. It may have been 1923 or as late as 1924. Bakst referred to the work as “my ill-fated panels for M. de Rothschild.” [57] The panels in themselves reveal in microcosm Bakst’s mastery of tone, color and pattern, and point of view – elements that were also integral to his theatrical designs. The elaborate flowing gowns of the Queen and the Nurse in the lower third of the first panel, the baptism (1922), lead the eye toward a tiny crib holding the infant Princess. (fig. 10) Behind, reduced in perspective, stand the King and the “Good Fairy” (not the Lilac Fairy) with raised wand. In the background, a trail of rats precedes the Bad Fairy as she approaches on foot through an arch. The elaborate headdresses of the two fairies recall Paul Berain’s Furie Erinnis from his designs for the Sun King (fig. 11). Bakst placed the crown of the presumptive heir at the central axis of the painting, even though it is the smallest crown; the Good Fairy’s crown is the largest – larger even than the king’s crown, indicating the importance of magical power here. The presence of Aurora’s crown at the congruence of both vertical and horizontal planes signifies order and law as well as what is at stake in the tale, continuance of the royal line. The dominant arch in this scene sits at an angle to the rear plane of the picture. This echoes the scena per angolo utilized by Bakst in his backdrop for Scene I of The Sleeping Princess. However, it is important to note that Bakst had also used the scena per angolo in conjunction with the Christening scene in 1916, for Pavlova. This device of using the diagonal to disturb horizontal and vertical symmetries was developed by the Bibiena family during the baroque period and utilized in both architectural drawings and design of stage décor. Bakst’s reinterpretation of the Bibiena model will be discussed in detail below as it relates to the The Sleeping Beauty of Chaikovsky and Petipa. Yet Bakst’s adoption of the scena per angolo since at least 1916, and possibly earlier, in both the Rothschild panel and the first backdrop for Pavlova’s ballet, indicates that this was a significant element of his conception of the Christening scene. In the next panel in the sequence, the curse of the Bad Fairy (1922), the view is focused closer to the diagonal arch (which now reveals three inner arches hung with tapestries) (fig. 12). The pattern of the dark-bodied rats with tails extending to the left is echoed in the now-sinister depiction of the dark patterning on the nurse’s gown and its proximity to the dark spots on the robe of the Bad Fairy. Even the pattern of the tapestries resembles this visual motif. Here, Bakst used patterns not only for decorative quality (as was his wont), but also as a metaphorical representation of how the Bad Fairy’s evil has permeated the palace. Returning to Perrault’s original text, for the third panel Bakst depicted a Princess fascinated by an old woman spinning. The angle of the alcove in the high turret where the Princess spins is softened (fig. 13). The door is open as is the window that reveals the tranquil realm. The patterns on the floor, the dresses, and the hob-nailed wooden door with sun and moon are pleasing and varied; a bowl of milk awaits the cat playing on the floor. There are two portentous signs: the glare of the cat at an unseen object, and a silent, dark bird (perhaps a raven, but definitely not an eagle) that watches the Princess from the shadows of a lofty perch. This bird resembles the stuffed raven that Bakst kept on his study desk (fig. 14) in Paris, acquired in the 1890s after reading Edgar Allan Poe. In the undated final panel, the Prince kisses the Princess’s hand to break the enchantment (fig. 15). She wears her crown and, emphasizing that the lineage is intact, a large decorative crown adorns the top of her bed canopy. Again, Bakst’s fascination with decoration and ornament is in evidence: fleurs-de-lis adorn her coverlet and bed curtains, and form her crown; the carved stone arch over her bed contains stylized vines which are echoed in the vines covering her windows; the tile floor is an elaborate mosaic; and the carpet leading up to her bed depicts a phoenix, sign of rebirth. The variegated and exuberant patterns in stone and folds of tasseled drapery surround the simple innocence of the Princess with her flowing hair and plain nightdress. In this panel the view is direct and symmetrical. There are no diagonal angles as before. Bakst’s work on the Rothschild panels spanned several years before The Sleeping Princess and one year after the ballet, and thus has an important but tangential relationship to The Sleeping Princess décor. In the panels Bakst shows his mastery of narrative with regard to The Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and attention to focus and angles of view. 15
	Bakst and Pavlova’s Sleeping Beauty (1916) Bakst’s first theatricaal encounter with The Sleeping Beauty came in 1916 when the ballerina Anna Pavlova commissioned him to design the sets and costumes for her abbreviated version of Chaikovsky’s ballet. [58] Bakst had worked intermittently with Pavlova in Russia as well as in the West. He designed her costumes for Chopiniana at the Mariinsky (1907 and second version 1908), The Dying Swan (1908) (fig. 16), Oriental Fantasy (1913, renamed Orientale for the American tour), and others. For the 1915-16 season the Anna Pavlova Ballet Russe company toured the United States and also appeared in a film called The Dumb Girl of Portici based on the opera La muette de Portici by Auber. Not wanting to return to Europe during wartime, and reluctant to repeat her own material while Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (under the direction of Nijinsky) was in the U.S., Pavlova arranged with Charles Dillingham to produce The Sleeping Beauty at the New York Hippodrome. The ballet was part of a revue billed as The Big Show, the second year of Dillingham’s popular variety show. It opened August 31, 1916 and continued until January 1917. The Hippodrome was one of New York’s largest venues, with 5,697 seats. Its large stage, 160 feet long, could easily accommodate the first act “Mammoth Minstrels” (“400 – Count ‘em – 400,” according to the program), and in fact it was difficult to cast the large corps de ballet needed to fill out the stage for The Sleeping Beauty [59] (fig. 17). There were two performances a day, Monday through Saturday. Pavlova’s ballet was preceded by vaudeville acts, a circus procession of elephants that “played” a baseball game, and the aforementioned minstrel show. The Sleeping Beauty, called Act Two in the Hippodrome program, was followed by an ice ballet whose skater was billed as “The Pavlowa of the Ice,” a skeleton dance, and a suspended grand piano played by a man clutching the attached stool while a dancer, also suspended by a wire, turned on point on the piano lid (fig. 18). It was no wonder that the finale of Pavlova’s ballet included chorus girls dressed as fairies, attached to wires, rising above the stage. [60] The ballet was originally conceived in four tableaux that lasted about 50 minutes. A September 1916 review described Bakst’s scenography thus: The first scene shows a reception in the palace to celebrate the birthday of the Princess Aurora, who lies in her cradle. In this the decorations and costumes are marvelous combinations of blues and greens, fully as beautiful as those of the Diaghileff ballet, although perhaps not so striking. The good and bad fairies make their gifts to the child. The second tableau shows the gardens of the palace sixteen years later. This is by far the most beautiful of the four scenes. The blending of the bright colors against a dull background, the dancing of the ballet and the wealth of flowers in all parts of the stage make it a picture never surpassed. Here Pavlowa makes her first appearance in a gorgeous cloth of gold costume, dancing with M. Volinine. In this scene [the Vision, there is a] ballet of the nymphs, somewhat reminiscent of “Les Sylphides,” but even more delightful. The fourth scene shows the awakening of the princess by the kiss of the prince. The scene is in the palace…the colors are marvelous. In this scene Pavlowa dances her famous gavotte, one of the most graceful of her dances. [61] 16		Fig.16 Fig.17 Fig.18
Fig.19 Fig.20 Fig.21	The four tableaux as described do not match cleanly with the five illustrations in the programme (fig. 19). The first scene clearly takes place in the arched reception hall (top). The second tableau, showing the palace gardens, seems to take place in the second illustration. Ivan Clustine, Pavlova’s choreographer, had specified in his libretto that the Good Fairy would appear from behind the fountain, and there is a fountain at the center rear of this design. [62] The third illustration does not have a corollary in the description above. The fourth illustration of forest with castle in the background would seem to correspond to the Vision scene. Bakst could have intended the third illustration as a backdrop for the Hunt scene. However, notes from the R.H. Burnside Papers indicate that there was not a full-blown Hunt scene in the Pavlova production. Pavlova commissioned Bakst to design the sets and costumes at the end of June, 1916 and thus he had less than two months to complete the work. Because he was afraid to cross the Atlantic in wartime, Bakst sent his designs by post and did not oversee the execution of the décor. The reviews of Sleeping Beauty were not favorable, despite the acknowledged grace of Pavlova and enthusiasm for the colorful sets and costumes of Bakst. The New York Times, under the headlines “Dillingham Has Done It Again…but the Enchanting Pavlowa Is Hampered by a Badly Staged Ballet,” criticized the staging: The Pavlowa ballet is a grievous disappointment. The quest of entertainment that will have a broad enough appeal to please 60,000 persons every week is a difficult quest, but if this ballet proves a weak spot in “The Big Show,” it will not be because it is too rare and fine for the multitude. It will be because is not good enough. Here is a charming, simple ballet – “The Sleeping Beauty,” retold in song, and pantomime, and dance – whose values are forfeited by bad staging. When Pavlowa dances – that blithe spirit, that enchanting embodiment of the sense of liberation – when she dances there are moments of beauty to thrill any pilgrim. But it is a perfect jewel in a wretched setting. The Bakst costumes – if not all the backgrounds – are brave in color and lovely in design, but the ensembles are miscellaneous and undistinguished. The lighting is atrocious, the whole ballet sprawled without focus over an absurdly large area. Here are charming materials wretchedly handled. Perhaps it would be best to pitch “The Sleeping Beauty” into the scrap basket and let Pavlowa and Volinine dance on a narrowed stage before one beautiful setting. [63] The “retold in song” remark alluded to recitatives sung by Letty Yorke, the Good Fairy, and Henry Taylor, the Bad Fairy. [64] After five weeks the ballet was reduced from fifty minutes to two scenes totaling twelve minutes.[65] The backdrops may have been changed at this time. Judging from two studio photos, at least one of the two backdrops was not Bakst’s design. In (fig. 20), the Christening scene, Aurora’s crib is in the center surrounded by the ensemble. Apart from the column pedestals with their embossed ovals, this design does not match the illustration in the Hippodrome programme. There is no extant sketch of Bakst’s that corresponds with the backdrop in this photograph, raising the possibility that a different backdrop was substituted. Another photo (fig. 21) of the garland dance shows the second backdrop with a fountain at its center rear. The design of this backdrop is not extant either, though the Hippodrome programme identified it as one of five illustrations belonging to Bakst. In any case, after three months a program of divertissements was substituted for The Sleeping Beauty. It is not known what backdrop(s) may have been used then. “Anna Pavlowa, première danseuse at the Hippodrome,” wrote the NY Telegraph,” made a complete change in her divertissement yesterday, and ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ is no more. It was replaced by a program of request numbers, selected from her repertoire. Slips were distributed throughout the audience last night announcing that Mme Pavlowa’s program will be changed at regular intervals, and a list of the artist’s favorite divertissements was submitted.” [66] Pavlova’s Sleeping Beauty was presented in a popular venue and on a stage too large for the ballet. For Bakst’s part, the artist never visited the Hippodrome and misjudged its dimensions. The scenic painter must have had difficulty translating a Bakst drawing of approximately 19 X 24 inches to a stage 160 feet in length. ) Bakst was accustomed to the much smaller stages of Europe; his later backdrops for The Sleeping Princess measured 46 feet in length.[67] These factors, coupled with the drastic shortening of the ballet, probably led to the excision of Bakst’s scenic designs. 17
	A number of artifacts survive from Bakst’s work for the Pavlova Sleeping Beauty and shed some light on which designs were re-used or adapted later for The Sleeping Princess. These include set designs, costume designs, studio photos, and a number of actual costumes preserved at the Museum of the City of New York. Bakst’s design for Scene I, based on the Bibiena Atrio, was revised and used in 1921. (fig. 22) The hidden castle for Scene III, the Vision, was also revised and used in The Sleeping Princess. Two pencil studies for Scene V show the main attributes of Bakst’s final scene for The Sleeping Princess. (fig.23) and (fig. 24) Several paintings from 1916 were not used then but are extant: a forest scene (fig. 25) and a version of Aurora’s canopy bed hidden in the forest (fig. 26). Regarding Bakst’s costumes, three were planned originally for Pavlova in the role of Aurora. The first was entirely in gold, with what resembles a rose pinned at the bodice (photograph proofs, fig. 27). The second was for the Vision scene; Clustine had instructed Bakst that the “costume for the vision of the Princess should be fantastical, in the nature of a long shirt in some silver material falling below the knees.” [68] Bakst complied with a design annotated as follows for the costumier: (fig. 28) Epaule transparente…M! L’étoffe doit être un espèce de mousseline miroitante d’argent ou diamant legère et blanche. Les endroits verts clairs sont en taffetas, en aussi mousseline de couleur. Le dessous du jupe est en gaze diamante et dont facilement flotter autour pendant la danse. Le volant transparent au dessous des genoux est a volonté de Mme Pavlova. On peut le supprimer, alors il faudra raccourcir le volant du dessus de la jupe!...– souliers blancs. [Transparent sleeves…M! [presumably the tailor Muelle in Paris] The fabric must be a kind of muslin shimmering with silver or sparkles, light and white. The parts [of the drawing] in light green are in taffeta, in the same color as the muslin. The back of the skirt is in sparkling gauze so that it can float around during the dance. The transparent flounce below the knees is according to the wishes of Mme. Pavlova. It can be removed or shortened by taking it up behind the skirt…white shoes.] [69] There are no extant photos of Pavlova in this costume. Bakst’s wedding dress for Pavlova (fig. 29) included an elaborate wig and headdress, and heeled shoes. This dance was titled “Chaconne” in the Hippodrome programme and evidently was not danced on pointe. [70] Clustine suggested originally that the fairies’ costumes reflect their respective attributes; in the end he and Bakst made the costumes different colors, reminiscent of Bakst’s early work in St. Petersburg for Hedda Gabler. Schouvaloff reports that the usual number of seven Good Fairies was expanded to eight: “Beauty – Pink; Gracefulness – Lavender; Cleverness – Grey; Wisdom – Blue; Gentleness – Yellow; Goodness – Gold; Contentment – Rose: Happiness – White.” [71] The Bad Fairy was costumed in green. It is possible that the number of fairies was expanded to accommodate the dancers in Pavlova’s troupe (the ballet roles were filled from Pavlova’s troupe and the other dancers came from the ranks of chorus men and women). Bakst’s work for Pavlova in 1916 was generally of a high standard, yet poor execution of the production relegates his work to secondary consideration. His designs for the Christening, the Vision, and the Wedding in The Sleeping Princess have their roots in three of the set designs examined here. They testify to Bakst’s early interest in the Bibiena designs as models for the first and last scenes and his liking for the castle perched above a forest setting. 18		Fig.22 Fig.23 Fig.24 Fig.25 Fig.26 Fig.27 Fig.28 Fig.29
	Bakst and the Inception of The Sleeping Princess (1921) By the time a Ballets Russes production of the Chaikovsky/Petipa Sleeping Beauty was being contemplated in spring of 1921 (Stravinsky and Diaghilev were playing the two-hand score while in Seville for Easter Week), Diaghilev and Bakst had not collaborated on a ballet, and likely had not spoken, for some years. Bakst’s last realized production for Diaghilev was Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur of 1917, on which Bakst was working in Rome when he wrote to Wormser about the Rothschild panels. At that time Diaghilev had spoken with Bakst about plans for La Boutique Fantasque to be choreographed by Léonide Massine. Bakst was enthusiastic and soon produced a number of designs. Because of the war, Diaghilev was not in a position to stage any new ballets in 1918, although he did commission new scenery and costumes from Robert and Sonia Delaunay for Cléopâtre. The troupe toured Spain in the spring of 1918 and finished in Barcelona, broke and without prospects. A number of dancers departed. Through the intercession of Sir Oswald Stoll, owner of the Coliseum and the Alhambra Theatre, and various diplomats, permission was secured for passage of the troupe through France to London in the summer of 1918. Stoll wired Diaghilev £1,000 to transport such dancers, sets, and costumes as remained. Diaghilev cobbled together a season at the Coliseum of older ballets and more recent ones unfamiliar to British audiences. [72] Most of the backdrops were repainted by the Russian émigrés Vladimir and Elizabeth Polunin, whom Diaghilev met for the first time in London.[73] A shift had occurred after the war in Diaghilev’s views toward Ballets Russes décors. In spring of 1919 Diaghilev revived the idea of La Boutique Fantasque but no longer wanted Bakst’s input; he had decided to ask André Derain to create the décor. By precipitously demanding the completed designs of Bakst, Diaghilev engineered the rescission, which Bakst took badly. Coinciding with the development of Massine, as his in-house choreographer, was Diaghilev’s shift away from the Russian artists such as Bakst, Benois, Boris Anisfeld, and Mstislav Doboujinsky at this time. For the new ballets of 1919 Diaghilev engaged easel painters active in Paris, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Derain.[74] According to Massine, Diaghilev desired a “change from lavish splendour to simplicity and rigid artistic control.” [75] Polunin wrote, “Having dealt so long with Bakst’s complicated and ostentatious scenery, the austere simplicity of Picasso’s drawing [for Le Tricorne, 1919], with its total absence of unnecessary detail, the composition and unity of the colouring – in short, the synthetical character of the whole – was astounding. It was just as if one had spent a long time in a hot room and then passed into fresh air.”[76] What Diaghilev wrote in the program for La Boutique Fantasque was perhaps the most telling of the shift away from Bakst’s style of décor: Nearly all that has been seen until now at the Russian Ballet, and that has revolutionized theatrical art, is the application of decorative art to painting. Bakst, Larionov, Golovine were great decorative artists and remarkable costume designers who succeeded in composing a picture by decorative means. They employed strong, brilliant means; they arrived at orgies of Oriental colour, at broad and careless painting which corresponded to the aggregate effect of their decorative conception. In the presentation of La Boutique Fantasque, the opposite principle is applied. Andre Derain, the great fauve, the leader, with Matisse, of the new French school, is essentially a painter of easel pictures. He is a renovator of the purest French classical painting without being a mere constructor. This Italian primitive, in the guise of the modern French movement, is at the same time a great revolutionist in the region of colour. He has begun to measure out colour aided by the well-balanced taste of a Latin deriving from Giotto and Leonardo. That is why, in the harmony of the scenery and costumes of La Boutique Fantasque, we are agreeably surprised at the application of this broad view and at the admirable result of his quest of harmonies that are tender and calming. [77] 19
	Diaghilev managed deftly to praise Bakst and the other artists, who had a large and undeniable part in the establishment of the Ballets Russes, while at the same time criticizing their painting as “careless.” Diaghilev attached the descriptor “decorative artist” as a pejorative to Bakst and the rest and classified their work as pastiche and passé in order to promote the newer artist. It is significant that Diaghilev described Derain as “a renovator of the purest French classical painting”; Diaghilev’s comment pointed to a larger aesthetic debate taking place in France and, to a lesser extent, in England. Several London critics echoed this view of Derain’s décor for La Boutique Fantasque. For example, Clive Bell wrote in the New Republic, “M. Derain, besides being one of the best, is one of the gravest and most scholarly of modern painters. Only a simpleton could suppose that because he uses the new post-impressionist idiom he is not perfectly classical. He has the traditional French taste for a severe palette – black and white, grays, greens, and browns. His harmonies are discreet and distinguished. His design simple.” [78] This same “severe French palette” had previously been perceived as nondescript compared with Bakst’s 1909-10 décors: “No Frenchman,” wrote Martin Birnbaum in 1913, “nor any artist influenced by French ideas, would have dared to use such a gamut of brilliant colors at a time when our drab, occidental culture sought appropriate expression in flat subdued tones.” [79] By 1919, austerity and restraint, including a limited palette, were valued over exuberance. Roger Fry expressed this sentiment in Current Opinion, M. Derain represents to us the purest French classicism; one must almost define his qualities by negatives. It is by suppression of emphasis that he gets the full force of his accents. He willfully sets a rigid limit to the means at his disposal. His scene is painted with a few earth colors, some gay greens, a dull gray blue, and notes of black and white. But by the summary simplification of his modeling, and the ease and directness of his handling, these colors give an effect of singular luminosity and purity. But – most important of all for a scene where every gesture of the personages counts for so much – it supplies a perfect background against which every note of the costumes, from the astonishing black of M. Massine’s coat and trousers to the pale roses and sky blues and white of the ballerines, tells with its full force. It is a fine lesson in the virtues of economy and restraint. [80] 20
Fig.30 Fig.31	And it was not only the English who extolled such “virtues of economy”: Maurice Brillant wrote in Le correspondent that the new French artists demonstrated a “great care of construction, a great austerity, and a sobriety provoked by renunciation of impressionist colors.” [81] With The Sleeping Princess, Diaghilev and Stravinsky were intent on preparing the ground for acceptance of Chaikovsky’s music, particularly in France, within the context of revived interest in French “classical” music composers such as Rameau and Charpentier. That The Sleeping Princess did not survive to open in France was yet another bitter aspect to the production’s failure. Yet clearly, from the vantage point of 1921, Bakst’s style of décor represented an aesthetic that Diaghilev had shunned for several years. By the summer of 1921 plans to stage The Sleeping Princess had moved forward and a designer had to be chosen. Through Sir Oswald Stoll, Diaghilev had secured the use of a London venue for six months (beginning in October of that year) and a substantial advance of £10,000 toward the new production. The venue was the Alhambra Theatre on Leicester Square, seating 1,800, and the Alhambra Company was the benefactor. [82] Diaghilev asked his long-time friend Walter Nouvel, then his business manager, to approach Benois, who was a natural candidate to produce the décor given his special interest in the court of Versailles. However, on July 8, 1921 Nouvel telegrammed Diaghilev that Benois was unable to circumvent his responsibilities as curator of the Hermitage Museum and could not leave Russia at that time. [83] Bakst in Paris was thus quickly recruited as a second choice. By July 16 Bakst had joined Diaghilev, his new secretary Boris Kochno, and associate Randolfo Barrochi for discussions in England. [84] Knowing that Diaghilev was already under tremendous time pressure to produce a ballet in three months, Bakst negotiated a demanding agreement. His terms were: a fee of Frs. 28,000 (five scenes at Frs. 5,000 each and Frs. 3,000 for “expenses”); the inclusion of the words “The entire production by M. Léon Bakst” on the program, just below the title (and above the names of Chaikovsky, Stravinsky, Petipa, and the régisseur Nikolai Sergeyev); and the promise of a commission to design the upcoming Mavra. These terms were not honored. “The entire production by M. Léon Bakst” did appear on The Sleeping Princess program, but in substantially reduced type (fig. 30) and (fig. 31). Bakst was never paid for his Sleeping Princess décor. Probably most of Stoll’s advances went to purchase cloth and trim for the backdrops and costumes, and to pay the costume-makers and scene-painters, who would not have delivered them otherwise. As an added insult, the Mavra commission was given to Léopold Survage after Bakst had begun work on it. Several biographers of Bakst have incorrectly stated that Bakst had only six weeks to produce the enormous quantity of sets and costumes. Bakst in fact had over three months to work on The Sleeping Princess, from the July 21 meeting until the intended premiere date of October 31 (which was pushed back to November 2, probably due to the last-minute change to the Awakening set). Levinson, long a champion of Bakst, glorified Bakst’s efforts as nothing short of heroic: “In less than six weeks – his time was necessarily restricted – Léon Bakst composed, or, rather, improvised the six scenes and the three hundred costumes (a whole world of pictorial fiction) which the ballet contains. A less bold, more timorous worker [Benois?], seeking the exact historical document, nosing about in portfolios, compiling dossiers, would have succumbed to the difficulties. Bakst, above all else an imaginative artist, triumphed. Instead of building up an imitation, he created a dream of reality.” [85] It is possible that Spencer was repeating Levinson’s error when he asserted that “Bakst had six weeks to mount this most demanding of ballets.” Spencer added his own conclusion, “He was already a sick man,” as a mitigating factor for the failure of The Sleeping Princess. [86] As it was, three months was a tight schedule to meet from a décor standpoint, as it was also in securing the necessary numbers of dancers trained in the Russian classical style and rehearsing all the ensemble numbers. Yet, however intense the time pressure was for The Sleeping Princess (and probably most Ballets Russes premieres were similarly pressured), it is inaccurate to suggest that Bakst’s designs were either precipitously conceived, or mostly derivative. Bakst’s remarks to Diaghilev in 1919, about La Boutique Fantasque, could be applied equally to The Sleeping Princess: “The whole secret of the success of the way I design productions is that I take to heart every one of them and finish off the work of the choreographer or author of the ballet…. As usual, I have imagined everything on a grand scale.” [87] 21
	The Sleeping Princess was an extravagant spectacle, like The Sleeping Beauty before it. Once the contract was signed, Diaghilev and Bakst (and Stravinsky and everyone else) did not hesitate to achieve the most lavish production possible. For the Russian émigrés, The Sleeping Beauty was synonymous with splendor, spectacle, and excess. Diaghilev and Bakst probably attended a Mariinsky revival of the 1890 production in 1903 with original décor. There was a second production in 1914 with new décor by Korovin, necessitated by the poor state of the original costumes. [88] At the time of its premiere balletomanes and critics in St. Petersburg faulted Director Vsevolozhsky’s costumes as overwhelming the choreography with decorative elements. The following appeared in the Novosti i birzhevaya gazeta the day after opening night, “Silk, velvet, plush, gold and silver embroidery, marvelous brocade materials, furs, plumes, and flowers, knightly armour and metal decorations – it is lavish, and the richness is showered on the adornment even of the least important characters.” [89] The reviewer could have been describing Bakst’s costumes of thirty years later. The level of decorative detail specified in his drawings of 1921 was extraordinary, down to the elaborate costumes for the pages and guards (fig. 32). Another St. Petersburg critic addressed the line crossed (he wrote) from tasteful sumptuousness to carnival excess in The Sleeping Beauty: The costumes are perhaps too luxurious in their material…they seem too heavy for ballet…Of course, ballet requires lavish production and economy is out of place, because a lavish ballet will sustain more performances, draw bigger houses, and pay for itself sooner; but luxuriousness has its limits, stipulated by the nature of the art…. The huge number of extras in expensive costumes and the diverse transformations constitute nothing more than a large balagan; such a work draws crowds, especially in the capitals where the public numbers millions. But such spectacles attract neither a constant public nor a circle of educated adherents. [90] The Mariinsky production consumed more than a quarter of the production department’s annual budget of the Imperial Theatres for the 1890-91 season. [91] Like its predecessor, The Sleeping Princess production was mounted at tremendous cost. Under financial pressure from his directors and without hope of recouping his investment, Stoll announced that the ballet would close on February 4, 1922. Diaghilev borrowed money from the mother of one of his English dancers and left London in some haste, before the final performance. As he feared, the sets and costumes were seized against the monies owed the Alhambra, reportedly £11,000.[92] Thus Diaghilev could not fulfill his contract with Jacques Rouché of the Paris Opéra for a spring engagement of The Sleeping Princess. Many of the dancers were not paid and scattered to look for work elsewhere. Olga Spessivtseva, one of the Auroras, returned to the Mariinsky and danced in Fedor Lopukhov’s revision of The Sleeping Beauty (October 1922). [93] Bakst, citing his non-payment, filed a lawsuit in 1923 that banned Diaghilev from using the sets and costumes he designed. Meanwhile, the décor materials were lying in storage underneath the Coliseum stage and unavailable. MacDonald reports that “Some years later, a tank used for a diving act leaked, and rumour had it that they had all been ruined. This was turned into a diatribe against Stoll, who was accused of rank carelessness in their storage.” [94] In fact, many of the costumes, and the backdrop of one of the scenes, did survive. [95] Stoll wrote to Diaghilev on September 23, 1924, that “it is hereby confirmed that no proceedings will be taken against you for the recovery of your debt to the Alhambra Company Limited, and on settlement in full of the said sum of £2,000, the whole of the production of “The Sleeping Princess” will become your property.” [96] In the letter, Stoll allowed Diaghilev to pay him £30 per week for a seven-week engagement at the Coliseum in fall of 1924. It may be inferred that Diaghilev remitted the remaining £1,790 and repossessed the sets and costumes, since The Sleeping Princess sets and costumes, in addition to materials from other ballets, were in storage in a warehouse outside Paris at the time of Diaghilev’s death in August 1929. However, he never again used The Sleeping Princess sets and costumes. (It is assumed that Diaghilev was released from Bakst’s injunction due to the latter’s death in December of 1924.) The dancer and choreographer Leonid Massine managed to obtain legal control of the properties, after Diaghilev’s death, with the intention of using them for a troupe assembled to perform in New York. This venture fell through after the U.S. stock market crash, when backing was withdrawn from the Broadway producer E. Ray Goetz. “My contract was cancelled,” wrote Massine, “and I found myself the owner of all the Diaghilev material, stored far away in Paris, with no means of using it.” [97] Various sets and costumes of the Ballets Russes, including the Scene V backdrop from The Sleeping Princess, came to be used by the company of Col. de Basil. These materials were not, however, owned by the de Basil company; they had been purchased from Massine in 1934 by a foundation backed by the London Committee of Friends of the Ballet. When de Basil died in 1951, the company disbanded and the costumes and scenery were again warehoused. According to Anthony Diamantidi, member of the controlling foundation, the annual storage cost of £10,000 became too onerous and the materials were finally offered up for auction in 1967.[98] Richard Buckle, engaged by Sotheby’s to investigate the materials and their potential for auction, describes how these relics came to light: 22		Fig.32
	The sale of Diaghilev ballet material held by Sotheby’s in June 1967, not only broke new ground in Bond Street; it proved that even the slightest relic of the legendary Diaghilev period had acquired a value both monetary and historical in the eyes of museums, collections and of the public. The most startling result of that auction was that the Chairman of the Diaghilev and de Basil Ballets Foundation [presumably Diamantidi] came forward to suggest that all the surviving décors and costumes of those companies should be put up for sale….So, September of last year [1967] found Thilo von Watzdorf [of Sotheby’s], David Ellis-Jones [an art dealer] and myself in a warehouse at Montrouge in the southern suburbs of Paris, unpacking trunks and baskets, unfolding curtains, coughing and blinking from the clouds of dust. We could hardly believe our eyes as lid after lid was thrown open and treasure after treasure was identified; we were seized with a curiosity which was akin to greed. Huge wired and beaded skirts by Bakst from ‘Le Dieu Bleu’…. We even unfolded three back-cloths by Gontcharova for ‘Coq d’Or’ and Bakst’s curtain depicting a baroque palace, which was the last scene of ‘The Sleeping Princess’ and used by de Basil for ‘Aurora’s Wedding’. [99] Many of the Diaghilev ballet materials were present in this collection. The portions from The Sleeping Princess included about 160 costumes or parts of costumes (cloaks, trains, skirts, or jackets) and the backdrop and two side legs and pelmet from Scene V. These items were auctioned by Sotheby’s on July 17-18, 1968. Bakst’s Scenography and Costumes for The Sleeping Princess By the time of The Sleeping Princess Bakst’s aesthetic sensibility in terms of theatrical design had been developing for nearly twenty years, yet his experience designing for large-scale ballets was scant. As discussed above, Bakst’s involvement in Pavlova’s 1916 Beauty was at arm’s length, and was very different from the close collaboration among principals that occurred in the 1921 Diaghilev production. For Diaghilev, Bakst had nearly always operated within the framework of the characteristic Ballets Russes one-act ballet. This was not always the case for his work outside the Ballets Russes, some of which was not for ballet. [100] Bakst attained his command of color and mood, what he termed “tone,” in a short format in which all aspects of the ballet were brought together in startling combination and sustained for about thirty minutes. One could argue, and scholars do, about whether that kind of synthesis was achieved in each of the new ballets produced under Diaghilev’s aegis. But it is never in doubt that some kind of concordance, or even deliberate discordance, was a Ballets Russes goal in combining the elements décor, dance, and music. For The Sleeping Princess, this goal of aesthetic fusion had to be approached differently from ballets created from the ground up. As a revival with existing music and choreography, each of the principals had their own task: Stravinsky was to update, orchestrate, and interpolate sections of the score; Nijinska was to compose some new dances and to re-create and sharpen some of Petipa’s choreography. Whether or not Diaghilev had explicitly imagined this, Bakst took upon himself the task of unifying the whole. His resulting décor was a response to the question of how to capture in image, to create one sweeping impression of, a large and complex work comprised of five very different scenes, spanning more than a century. Bakst’s response was to create a narrative arc through a progression of scenic designs, each stationary yet when experienced in sequence creating a large-scale kind of rhythm. Within this larger framework, Bakst designed the dancers’ costumes with regard to their individual character, as well as their effect en masse – a kind of choreography in its own right. Shunning slavish adherence to historical detail in the costumes, Bakst strove to complement each scene’s décor with the colors and textures that would most enhance the backdrops. To each scene was bestowed a different mood and Bakst reflected this in his costumes: the sparkle of the fairies and richness of the court, the garlands and villagers in a rustic garden scene, dusky autumn colors against a dark forest, misty nymphs and visions, and the gaiety of a wedding celebration replete with fantastical fairy tale figures. [101] In the five scenes for The Sleeping Princess the artist manipulated color and line, changes of scale, perspective, and other theatrical devices to shift mood and focus. Some of The Sleeping Princess backdrops were broad and expansive, open to the sky or suggestive of unexplored rooms and hallways; others were intimate, moody, veiled. For the public scenes that frame The Sleeping Princess – the palace in Scene I where the baby Aurora is christened, and the Scene V setting for the series of divertissements celebrating the betrothal of Aurora and Prince Charming – Bakst drew his inspiration from the Bibiena’s seventeenth century set designs for operas, and from Charles de Wailly’s eighteenth century design for Gluck’s opera Armide. In these two designs Bakst combined retrospectivism (that is, reference to past stage designs) with an architectural use of line and perspective to literally delineate the stage space and render the scenic backdrops appropriate for public rituals. Further, Bakst’s strong visual lines reinforced the ideas in the libretto regarding social hierarchies sustained by order, balance, rules, and clear-cut demarcations. Scene II, the Spell, was in scenic terms a transition with strong directional lines of a colonnade and landscaped garden balanced by shadowy trees and shrubbery. This scenery foreshadowed the forest encroaching on the royal castle for the hundred years’ sleep. In the inner scenes of The Sleeping Princess, Scenes III and IV, Bakst created a twilight world where visions and inner yearnings were veiled by scrims, expressed in saturated colors, and a rose-red bedroom softened by moonlight where the sleeping princess lay amid an over-sized canopied bed, protected by an enormous black eagle. 23
	The Christening, Scene I For the Christening scene, Bakst designed a grand ceremonial hallway dominated by a high, central arch turned at a 45° angle (fig. 33). Heavy black columns striated with white support the arch. The rounded columns rest on square pedestals; each face is embossed with an oval design. An ornate, domed ceiling rises above the columns. A thick decorative frieze supports a long row of balusters, defining the upper area of the hallway. In the upper left corner, just visible above the balustrade, are two low pots holding plants. Two decorated doorways, flanked by pilasters, are visible on the lower left. Two oval windows known as œils de bœuf top the doorways; in the well of one window rests a statue of a naked man. The blocking of this leftmost section, drawn in pencil on tissue paper, is extant and was evidently intended to aid in painting that section of the backdrop. In this rendering Bakst drew the double doors open to reveal a female in long gown observing what appears to be a painting gallery (fig. 34). This element was not carried into the actual painted backdrop, judging from photographs. Another statue, indistinct but apparently of two entwined figures, lies behind the central arch. Distant stairways lined with rows of guards recede into a second domed hall supported by arches and columns; a piece of statuary appears in profile along the guards lined on an ascending grand stairway. In Bakst’s painted design, columns and balustrades flank a wide stairway located in the foreground, right. It leads to the cradle holding the baby Aurora. A gold crown tops her canopy of bright peacock blue and ermine; the blue color stands out against the black columns and the muted white and gold color scheme of the rest of the room. Stage photographs show that this stairway and Aurora’s canopy and crib were a freestanding property that rested downstage, in front of the backdrop (fig. 35). The Lilac Fairy extends her arms protectively over the new addition to the royal family. The King and Queen stand a few steps lower, and the remainder of the fairies and Cantalabutte kneel below in obeisance and gratitude. The photograph also shows that for the actual realization Bakst enlarged in scale the (painted) guards behind the low balustrade. They are now recognizable as the king’s guard (fig. 36). In juxtaposing these painted images with real costumed guards who stood onstage, Bakst showed a certain playfulness in blurring the lines between the scenery and the costumed human figures. 24		Fig.33 Fig.34 Fig.35 Fig.36
	Bakst’s Scene I design for The Sleeping Princess was modeled closely on his 1916 design for Pavlova’s Prologue and Act 1. However, it differed in several important respects. The earlier concept did not depict a distant hallway with lines of receding guards. Occupying that space were high paned windows whose verticality matched the strong lines of columns. (fig. 22) The softly filtered light that Bakst imagined for Pavlova’s opening scene was exchanged for an expansion of the illusioned space for The Sleeping Princess. Other changes were smaller yet also significant. Bakst added three pieces of statuary to the 1921 backdrop, perhaps to provide a measure of continuity between the five scenes; each contains statuary in its final state, though not always in its preliminary state. He removed the fleurs-de-lis pattern, prominent in the 1916 design, from the princess’s peacock-blue canopy and ermine lining. The fleur-de-lis pattern is present, however, in the costumes of the King, Queen, and Princess Royal in Scene I (fig. 37). Bakst had also employed this pattern in the Awakening scene of the Rothschild panel; it appeared on the canopy of the sleeping princess’s bed and was embroidered in gold on her white dress. None of these changes in the 1921 Scene I design were major, but taken together they indicated Bakst’s thinking: his increased concern, here, with the ability of perspectival technique to suggest a vast realm of monarchical power; his attention to the role of statuary as a recurring motif among the five scenes; and his conscious elision of a symbol of French monarchy. Bakst’s careful emphasis in the Christening set on line and perspective, created through the illusion of a painted backdrop, stands in contrast to the corresponding design of 1890 (fig. 38). At the Mariinsky premiere, the Prologue scenery consisted of an actual, constructed palatial room. Elaborately carved columns defined protruding niches in the lower system, and the upper system was filled with dozens of niches containing statuary. The horizontal ceiling emulated huge wooden beams coffered into a pattern created by extending the lines of the columns below. The dancers entered through a large central arch in the rear, flattened so as to increase its width. Behind the arch stood a backdrop painted with two smaller arches: the left arch was en face, and the other was situated at an angle. It is difficult to ascertain the exact composition of this backdrop from the 1890 photo, but a photo of the 1999 Kirov Ballet revival, which replicated the original sets and costumes, shows greater detail (fig. 39). Four slender columns with capitals and a heavy cornice supported each leg of the angled arch. Bakst’s foreground arch in The Sleeping Princess bore a resemblance to this detail, but it is unknown if the connection existed in Bakst’s mind, or if the backdrop was a conventional design typical of the time. In the 1890 photo Aurora’s crib stood at the center, surrounded by fairies. Attendants, pages, and guards were arranged on either side, and the king and queen are at the right. The photo accentuates the axial symmetry that dominates this scene. There was no grand stairway for entrance or display, but there was a two-step platform for the crib and the thrones of the king and queen. This room, while of palatial proportions, was nonetheless created in the same scale as the audience area of the theatre. The Mariinsky set was based on axial perspective, characterized by symmetry and a central vanishing point. This was a typical feature of ballet stage design during the pre-Diaghilev era and reflected the power arrangements of the theatre, in which the royal box located in the center of the parterre level commanded the best view of the stage. 25		Fig.22 Fig.37 Fig.38 Fig.39
Fig.40 Fig.41	Bakst’s design for Scene I, in turning away from the model of the earlier production, owed a strong debt to baroque scenography. André Levinson was for some time the only critic to cite the influence of specific eighteenth century artists on Bakst’s décor, and to be aware, even, of Bakst’s rejection of Versailles as a model for his backdrops. [102] Levinson wrote in his review of The Sleeping Princess at the time of its premiere for La Revue Musicale: Ce que réalisa Bakst importe à tel point pour les destinées de La Belle que je ne saurais le passer sous silence. Lui non plus ne succomba pas aux suggestions du document historique, aux facilités du pastiche. Il ne fut point tenté de copier Versailles. Si l’on veut, c’est plutôt l’esprit de Tiepolo et de Piranèse qui plane au-dessus de ses colonnades en rotonde, de ses escaliers monumentaux. Grandiose, légère et sobre l’architecture de ses décors; les parties en sont situées dans l’espace de façon à obtenir une impression de profondeur et de hauteur prodigieuse, une harmonie de lignes et de volumes, de plans verticaux et de contours incurvés, si vaste et si multiple qu’il faut remonter au delà de la scénographie moderne, vers les Bibbiena et les Gonzago pour rechercher les rivaux de Bakst; pour ce qui est des 300 costumes improvisés en six semaines, je ne signalerai que l’exactitude parfaite des rapports établis entre leurs colorations chatoyantes; la «correspondance» des couleurs ne se dément nulle part. [I cannot remain silent regarding the impact of Bakst’s scenic realization on the future of La Belle. In his designs he has no more succumbed to the suggestions of historic documents, than to the ease of pastiche. There was no intention whatsoever to copy Versailles. Rather, it is the spirit of Tiepolo and Piranesi that hovers under his colonnaded rotundas and monumental stairways. Grandiose, delicate and restrained [is] the architecture of his décor; the proportions are situated in space so as to achieve an impression of depth and prodigious height, a harmony of lines and volumes, of vertical planes and curved contours, so vast and numerous that one must look beyond modern scenography, back toward the Bibienas and Gonzagos, in order to find a rival of Bakst; regarding the 300 costumes improvised in six weeks, I would only indicate the perfect exactitude of rapport among their shimmering hues; the «correspondance» of colors was in no way denied.] [103] Levinson’s commentary was incisive regarding Bakst’s intentional avoidance of Versailles as an architectural model, and his reference to the “ease of pastiche” echoed Stravinsky’s derisive allusion in The Sleeping Princess program to German music as “conscious and laboured pasticcio.” (The “open letter” to Diaghilev was published in the Paris newspapers October 10, 1921 and reprinted in translation in the program.) Levinson’s use of the term la «correspondance» in brackets was surely a reference to French Symbolism for the benefit of his French audience. However, his citing of “the spirit” of Tiepolo and Piranesi was ambiguous: perhaps Levinson was attempting to link Bakst’s high sky in Scene V to some of Tiepolo’s ceiling frescoes with wind-swept skies and Scene II’s garden setting to a Piranesi vedute. Piranesi’s views of Rome with decrepit ruins overrun by vegetation as symbols of lost empire would seem to have little to do with Bakst’s depiction of a garden with Florestan’s castle in the background, unless Levinson believed Bakst was making an exceedingly subtle commentary on decayed monarchy. (More likely it was Levinson who was making the oblique reference, and a bitter one, to the upheavals he had fled recently in Russia.) As Levinson elaborated in his 1922 book, The Designs of Léon Bakst for The Sleeping Princess, “Not only did Bakst powerfully reinforce the tradition of the dance, but he resolutely revived another tradition, that of architectural scenery…. We find him – after a century of sham realism – resuscitating the work of great decorative architects, masters of stage vision, like Gonzaga, Valeriani or Gradizzi in Russia, and Bibbiena or Serlio in Italy.” [104] (See fig.40 and fig.41) Levinson’s allusion to Italians who worked in the Russian courts in the eighteenth century may have been understood by members of his Parisian readership familiar with that history. Nonetheless, with the exception of the Bibiena family, Levinson’s description of these artists or decorative architects as “masters of stage vision” would seem an exaggeration and their connection to Bakst’s décor for The Sleeping Princess tenuous at best. [105] It is likely Levinson’s objective in these passages was to add stature to Bakst’s scenography by tying it to past grand traditions. 26
	It was not until much later that scholars identified specific sources for Bakst’s baroque- and rococo-inflected set designs. According to Deborah Howard, Bakst researched his décor at the Bibliothèque Nationale and used a drawing by Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena (1657-1743) in designing the backdrop for Scene I (both the 1916 and the 1921 versions). [106] Titled Atrio, the drawing (which also appeared as an engraving by Carlo Antonio Buffagnotti) was one of 70 plates in Varie Opere di Prospettiva, published by Ferdinando in Bologna in 1703-08. Atrio was also included in his Architettura Civile of 1711 (fig. 42). However, in the spring of 1916 Bakst was in Florence, not Paris, beginning his commission for Pavlova’s Sleeping Beauty. [107] It is likely that Bakst became acquainted with Ferdinando’s Atrio and other designs a year earlier, through an exhibition of Bibiena designs and publication of a book of commentary and plates, Corrado Ricci’s I Bibiena: Architetti Teatrali. The exhibition was held at the Museum of La Scala in Milan in 1915, and Ricci mentions Bakst in his book.[108] Bakst was in Geneva in 1915 recuperating from depression and may have visited the exhibition and become acquainted with Ricci. In I Bibiena Ricci discussed the work and lives of the Bibiena family for a dozen or so pages, and then he implied that Bakst was carrying the mantle of the Bibienas, the “maghi della scena” (wizards of scenography): Potrà sempre più l’elettricità dare novità e celerità di moti e di luce; potrà la proiezione dare realtà di fondi e la cinematografia fare, durante l’azione, ondeggiar marine e fremere boschi; potrà anche secondo i dettami del russo Bakst conquistare nuove armonie di colore; ma certe idee costruttive della scena, stabilite dai Bibiena rimarranno sempre, perchè conquistate e adottate con fervidi intendimenti d’arte e con le norme fondamentali e immutabili della prospettiva. E convien dire che il mondo dell’arte riconosce e celebra ancora le virtù loro, ripetendone la lode che già ebbero in vita di “maghia della scena„. [Electricity will give, more then ever before, new life and speed to movement and light; projection will succeed in rendering the background (backdrop) real, and during the action, cinematography will make the sea undulate and the woods tremble; according to the rules of the Russian Bakst, it will also conquer new harmonies of colors. However, some of the structural ideas about staging defined by Bibiena will last forever, because they were established and adopted with fervent artistic intentions and according to the foundational and immutable norms of perspective. It is appropriate to say that the world of art still recognizes and celebrates their virtues, repeating the praise that they received when still alive as the “wizards of scenic design.”] [109] Ricci’s unexpected allusion to the Russian set designer (and one known in 1915 especially for his exotic and oriental décors) in a book devoted to eighteenth century scenic design could indicate a personal acquaintance between Ricci and Bakst; possibly Ricci had given Bakst a copy of I Bibiena which he drew upon later when formulating the scenery for Aurora’s christening. 27		Fig.42
	Bakst’s Christening backdrop was based on Ferdinando’s Atrio and also parts of the Tempio di Apollo, plates 13 and 15 in Ricci’s book (fig. 43, Tempio). The Atrio supplied the basic structure and architectural elements seen in Bakst’s 1916 design, particularly the arch, set at an angle, the œils de bœuf, striated columns, ornamented doorways, and high balustrade. Bakst retained two of Ferdinando’s potted plants in the upper left corner, but he extended the balustrade and created a domed ceiling, thus enclosing what had been an open atrium. Bakst also removed the cloth hanging from behind the arch, which had been wrapped around a column. Oddly enough, Bakst perpetuated the engraver’s error with the entablature on either side of the arch, and did not correct this in 1921. There are two rows of molding to the right of the arch, whereas there should be three to match the left side. [110] That is, the line of perspective is incorrect in both cases, because the two visible columns supporting the right side of the arch appear higher than the columns supporting the left side of the arch. Bakst copied exactly how the left side of the arch attaches at right angles to the wall with the high balustrade, and how one column is squared at the joining point. In the Atrio, the pedestals of the columns have flat faces. Bakst interpolated into his design the raised oval motif from the Tempio di Apollo’s pedestals to the left of center. In another borrowing from the Tempio, Bakst inserted the right third of the design into his own, where he planned to locate the bassinet. The stairway and balustrade with railings were fitted into the right side of the main arch of the Christening design; Bakst changed the column design and the pedestal design by the stairway to match the columns and pedestals in the Atrio. Members of the extended Bibiena family, centered on Bologna, dominated baroque theatre design and scenography for over a century. [111] They were well known as architects and set designers to the Hapsburgs and other European courts, as well as theatres in Italy, from about 1680-1787. The nine artists were descendants of Giovanni Maria Galli, a painter known as “Il Fontaniere” for his specialization in fountains and watery scenery. Giovanni was originally from the Tuscan town Bibbiena (or Bibiena); he appended the town name to his own when another artist named Galli entered the Bolognese atelier in which he worked. Giovanni’s two sons and daughter, and some of their offspring, became known throughout Italy and eventually in courts across Europe, from London to St. Petersburg. The various Bibienas designed buildings such as theatres, churches, and catafalques. They painted frescoes and wall decorations for their patrons. Their work also included designing scenery and fireworks displays for festi theatrali, and opera sets for public and court theatres, and for performances in academic societies. Maria Oriana Bibiena (1656-1749) was a painter. Ferdinando studied painting and architecture and designed stage sets throughout Italy until he was commissioned as court architect and decorator for the wedding of Charles III the Pretender in Barcelona in 1708. Four years later Charles became Emperor Charles VI of Austria, and Ferdinando was invited to Vienna as imperial architect; Ferdinando joined his younger brother Francesco (1659-1739), already working in the Vienna court, and took his sons, Alessandro (1687-1769) and Giuseppe (1696-1757) to work with him. Ferdinando retired around 1726 to teach in Bologna until his death; Giuseppe was given his father’s imperial post. Giuseppe worked primarily in Vienna, Prague, Dresden, and Bayreuth on opera sets and design or the redesigning of opera houses. Antonio (1700-1774) was a theatre architect active in various parts of Italy. Carlo (1728-1787), known as “the last Bibiena,” was a scenic designer throughout the theatres of Europe. He worked under Francesco Gradizzi as a second painter at the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg from 1776-78. Maria Shcherbakova reports that Carlo designed the sets for Giovanni Paisiello’s first opera, in Russian, Nitteti, written for Catherine II in 1776. [112] 28		Fig.43
Fig.44 Fig.45	The Bibienas were known above all for their promulgation of the perspectival technique called scena per angolo; this is the element Bakst seized upon for his 1916 Prologue scene and amplified for The Sleeping Princess’s Scene I backdrop. The Bibienas introduced and popularized the use of this illusional device in scenography, and the technique became a family leitmotif known throughout Europe. In the “scene at an angle” a building or archway was projected toward the audience at a diagonal, 45-degree angle. Though Ferdinando laid claim to inventing the scena per angolo in his Architettura civile of 1711, oblique viewpoints had been present in Renaissance art for several centuries and possibly in some stage designs. What Ferdinando demonstrated in his detailed discussion was how exactly to calculate the arrangement of flats and side wings on stage so as to create an inverted V projecting toward the audience. In the Bibienas’ time this diagonal portion was literally built out with wings (or flats) that ran in tracks at oblique angles to the front line of the stage[113] (fig. 44). Previously, baroque set designs for opera created the illusion of stage depth through axial perspective. As many as a dozen side wings were proportioned so as to lead the eye toward a distant vanishing point, located at the horizontal center of the stage (fig. 45). In removing the vanishing point, the scena per angolo had the effect of severing the space between stage and audience. The stage became a different world inhabited by those on stage. Where axial perspective created the illusion of distance, scena per angolo presented corners and alcoves that led to unknown places. Stefano Arteaga commented in the late eighteenth century that “the art of making tiny spaces seem vast, the ease and speed of changing sets in a twinkling of an eye, the ability to dim or brighten the lights at will, and above all [Ferdinando Bibiena’s] discovery of buildings seen at an angle brought the science of illusion to its highest possible pitch. Since the secret of the fine arts is to present things so that the fancy does not stop where the senses stop, and to leave something unseen and unheard to be imagined, so the change from perspectives that limit sight and imagination by running to a central vanishing point was like opening a new world to busy the imagination.” [114] Bakst incorporated this effect and heightened its artificiality by painting all of the background, its protrusions and recesses, on a flat backcloth. The illusion that had been established through a three-dimensional placement of flats in the Bibienas’ time became two-dimensional in the hands of Bakst. His Christening set was a commentary on baroque illusional technique, as it referred to Ferdinando’s work even while departing from it technically. For Bakst, the scena per angolo arrangement was particularly apt for the Christening scene in that its organization of stage space complemented the ballet’s libretto and score. That is, in the first scene, the story predicts that the kingdom will sleep until Aurora is awakened by a kiss, thus averting the disaster promised by Carabosse. Similarly, in Chaikovsky’s score a key of resolution is predicted in the Prologue through the use of rising tonal areas. By using the architectural technique of scena per angolo, Bakst established a visual analogue to both libretto and the score. In his rejection of axial perspective and a central vanishing point, Bakst amplified the sense of an obstruction, the curse of Carabosse that blocks the natural course of events. The architectural design delineated a ceremonial hallway made for a grand, public ritual, and the prescribed roles of its participants. The large ceremonial hallway was made for a grand, public ritual. The stage design’s metaphorical evocation of Florestan’s extensive realm also reinforced an aspect of the choreography – that is, the structured entrances of Florestan’s court, with each group of attendants and royal personages announced formally (in mime) by Cantalabutte, the master of ceremonies. In Chaikovsky’s music, the tonal plan of the entire ballet – its spatial disposition – was laid out in the Prologue (corresponsing to Scene I in The Sleeping Princess). By using key areas that rise in intervals of a fourth, Chaikovsky establishes a trajectory that indicates the expected final key area (G) of the Prologue; it is the arrival of Carabosse and her appropriately dissonant musical motives that deflects the attainment of G. Yet, the Lilac Fairy’s promise of sleep, not death, and an awakening kiss from a prince, pre-ordains that G will be reached at the end of the piece. Of the four numbers in the Prologue, the Introduction is in E major and contains the themes of the Fairy Lilac and Carabosse; No. 1, Marche and No. 2, Scène dansante are predominantly in A; and No. 3, Pas de six is in D. No. 4, the Finale, ends not in G but in E, the tonal “space” generally occupied by both the Lilac Fairy and her sister, Carabosse (differentiated by major and minor modes). [115] Bakst’s emphasis on perspectival treatment of space, including the implications of the scena per angolo, is thus a visual expression of the core aspects of The Sleeping Princess libretto and score. 29
	The relatively neutral palette of the Christening set, especially notable for an exuberant colorist like Bakst, was chosen to create maximum theatrical effect with the costumed dancers. At the heart of Bakst’s Scene I conception was the intersection of implied and actual movement. After the musical introduction, the curtain rose on an empty stage. The backdrop, with its distant rooms, staircases, and alcoves invited the audience to explore the unseen. As the procession of courtiers began, the stage filled gradually with masses of colors. [116] The movement implied by painted stairways and alcoves overlapped with actual movement, much as painted members of the King’s Guard were juxtaposed with real ones. Lydia Sokolova, who danced one of the fairies, described the audience reaction as the curtain rose: “On the first night we found that there was so little room backstage…that the wings could not contain the crowd of dancers to go on in the opening scene, and a number of us overflowed up a dirty, stone staircase. We waited in these drab surroundings as the orchestra struck up the first bars of the majestic score, a shivering procession, but clad in the richest costumes the company had ever worn. Then our cue came, and we suddenly found ourselves on a stage blazing with lights, amid the splendours of the white and gold décor….One could hear the audience gasp.” [117] Bakst demonstrated a special understanding of The Sleeping Beauty in how he conceptualized the processional. In contrast to the Mariinsky entrées through the rear arch, Bakst created a small up-and-over staircase on the right side of the stage, beside the canopied crib with its own staircase that was pulled forward. The diagonal entry of the royal retinue, and finally of the King and Queen, echoed the perspectival line of Bakst’s angled arch. Critic André Levinson describes the effect of this extended entrée thus: “First the plumes and head-dress appear, then the powdered wig, then the lord or lady complete…lords with their long wigs, plumed hats and green – almost black – coats, line up for the passage of King Florestan and the Queen, dressed in white and gold and ermine-lined blue velvet cloaks with long trains carried by blue pages. Enter the fairies…their white tutus adorned by charming emblems of magic power….Pages, also in white, carry their insignia. Every kaleidoscopic evolution is carried out to the rhythm of the action.” [118] In the absence of dancing, the costumes themselves pulse with motion: they contain feathery headdresses that wave, sequins that sparkle, fringes that sway, and capes that drape. [119] (See for example the Queen’s costume, fig. 46.) Levinson describes “the final moment when the crowd of gaily-bedizened courtiers, bowing before the fairy-guarded cradle, seem to surge towards it in one scarlet wave while a luxuriant group of Moors in black and gold, standing motionless in the midst of this flux of colour, serves as striking contrast: a medley of brilliant tones which complement the regal spaciousness of the décor.” [120] The Marche is the first number in the ballet and contains no dancing. At the very moment that the kinetic realm of the dance is suppressed, Bakst made the décor vibrate. Bakst had in fact intentionally reversed the traditional properties of décor and dance here. 30		Fig.46
Fig.47 Fig.48 Fig.49 Fig.50 Fig.51 Fig.52 Fig.53 Fig.54 Fig.55 Fig.56 Fig.57 Fig.58	Bakst’s costumes for Scene I establish the hierarchy within Florestan’s court through their graduated levels of finery, though even the guards’ costumes are complex and detailed; in the fairy realm the costumes evoke birds and flowers. At least eighty-five bodies occupied the stage for the Christening, and probably more since the full numbers of supernumeraries cannot be ascertained. The costume designs and the many extant costumes testify to the sumptuous detail Bakst devoted to each role. Silk, velvet, elaborate embroidery and facing, swansdown trim and lace decorate the costumes of the courtiers, culminating in the highly ornate and layered King and Queen’s costumes (fig. 47), (fig. 48). Vera Sudeikina’s dress, sewn in white and royal blue, was based on the 1916 design for the Queen and her two pages in Pavlova’s ballet (fig. 49). Bakst also used this design for the dress of the Princess Royal in this scene, but instead of in blue it was realized in “tango-colored velvet trimmed with orange swansdown sewn with ermine tails…appliqué with a padded baroque design in silver tissue embroidered with silver thread.” [121] The eleven principal roles featured Cantalabutte, the master of ceremonies, the King and Queen, the seven good fairies, and Carabosse. Cantalabutte wore a “state robe with trailing skirt of purplish-bronze shot brocade, the orange velvet lining visible through the arm slits; appliqué with a pattern of heraldic roses in silver tissue embroidered in silver thread between a criss-cross network of thorny branches in gold tissue outlined in gold embroidery” [122] (fig. 50). The costumes of the fairies reflected their names or qualities. For the costume of the wicked fairy, Carabosse, Bakst created a robe and witch’s hat with stars and moons, and a dramatic cape in dark orange with large, irregular spots (fig. 51). The symbols conjured associations with necromancy, and the cape suggested a large predatory animal such as a leopard. The Sotheby’s catalogue described it thus: Separate dark green-grey velvet bodice with heavy embroidery of owls and arabesques in gold and silver thread, with brass ball buttons down the front. A long matching velvet skirt bordered in silver with gold embroidery and brass ball buttons down the front; sewn with gold stars and appliqué silver lamé discs embroidered in black, suggesting moon faces, alternately comic and sad. A long orange velvet cloak painted with huge irregular ink-coloured splodges vaguely suggestive of a leopard’s markings many times enlarged. Lined with orange-vermillion cotton. Black-pointed witch’s hat with an upturned brim formed by petal-shaped panels of gold material appliqué with silver moons and planets on patches of black felt. [123] Diaghilev persuaded Carlotta Brianza, the ballerina who had created the role of Princess Aurora in 1890, to take on the role of Carabosse. She appeared in all but one performance of The Sleeping Princess. That was the night of January 5, 1922, when Enrico Cecchetti celebrated his fiftieth anniversary on the stage by reprising the role he created in 1890 (he had also danced the Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty). As Helena Hammond argues in “Cecchetti, Carabosse and The Sleeping Beauty,” the role of Carabosse originated by Cecchetti was meant to be associated with Catherine de’ Medici, widow of Henri II. “Striking iconographic parallels exist,” Hammond writes, “between an image of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day [August 18, 1572] probably created by a Protestant artist, which represents Catherine de’ Medici presiding over the gruesome littering of corpses in the courtyard-setting of a castle…and the palace garden-setting at the end of The Sleeping Beauty’s first act when the court is put to sleep for one hundred years.” [124] Whether Bakst interpreted the 1890 Carabosse in this way is unknown, but his costume for the malevolent fairy and the continuity of the particular pantomime interpretation ensured by Cecchetti’s presence support Hammond’s assertions. Bakst’s designs for the costumes of the good fairies, and a number of photographs, document their appearances. None of the actual costumes survive, although five of their trains were found and auctioned in 1968. [125] It is presumed that the fairies entered wearing their trains, which were later removed by their pages before their Variations. For the designs of the Fairies Cherry Blossom, Carnation, Mountain Ash, and Canary (or Song Birds), see (fig. 52), (fig. 53) , (fig. 54), and (fig. 55). For a photograph of Lydia Lopokova as the Lilac Fairy, see (fig. 56). Bronislava Nijinska danced the Fairy of the Hummingbirds (or Colibri), (see fig. 57). Occasionally Bakst took a hand in the makeup of the characters; he may have been responsible for the stylization of Nijinska’s makeup that slightly distorted her features.An ensemble studio photo (fig. 58) includes Fairies Hummingbird, Canary, Lilac, Pine Woods, and Carnation. It is not known why the Fairy of the Cherry Blossom is absent. 31
	The remaining roles in Scene I included the Pages of each good Fairy (see for example, fig. 59 for the Page of the Fairy Pine Tree), six Pages for Carabosse (four Cripples and two Hunchbacks, according to the design notes to the costumier), and four Rats to draw her carriage. Fourteen Ladies-in-Waiting and four Maids of Honour are listed in the program; the Randolph Schwabe illustration gives an idea of their costumes (fig. 61), although none actually survive. The number of Ladies-in-Waiting was probably fourteen because of the number of pages (seven) and good fairies in the Scène dansante. Other supernumeraries not yet mentioned include one Royal Physician (or Elderly Courtier), three Ministers of State (each costume the same), one King’s Herald, six Courtiers, and four each of King’s Negroes (or King’s Guard), Royal Pages, Brown Pages, Green Pages, Lackeys, Footmen, Negro Footmen, and Royal Nurses. [126] Children may have played some of the roles. [127] The number of original costume designs that Bakst produced for this scene is thirty-one; this total excludes four designs dating from 1916: those for the Queen and her Pages (the same as the Princess Royal), the Ministers of State, the Royal Pages, and the Royal Physician. 32		Fig.59 Fig.60 SEE Footnote 125 Fig.61
	The Spell, Scene II For this scene, Bakst designed a garden with a curved colonnade framed on the sides and rear by dark green yew trees (fig. 62). The palace is visible in the background, left of center and offset by steep terraces and massive retaining walls to the center and right foreground. In this scene the colors are deepened and the lines softened, as Bakst moved away from the architectural delineation of the Christening backdrop and toward an emphasis on color. In the scenery for the royal garden, the gentle curves of the colonnade and the terraced gardens echo the circular formation of the garland dance, and indeed even the shape of the garlands themselves. [128] The diagonal line of the terraces and the balustrades atop the colonnade and the palace façade provide a visual reminder of the previous scene’s backdrop. These diagonal lines of the terraces also reflect the choreographic diagonals in the Rose Adagio, as Aurora successively encounters each of the four suitors. Though asymmetrical, in this backdrop Bakst juxtaposes pictorial elements: the light areas with the dark ones; and the minute, detailed architectural elements (columns, balustrades, distant statuary on the castle facade) with the garden greenery and monolithic, rough walls. In Bakst’s design the “natural” outdoor elements impinge on the man-made ones, portending the hundred years of sleep. Deep shadows fall across the colonnade, and the thick foliage of a large tree and shrubs partially obscures the right side of the colonnade. The tops of the yew trees project in front of the palace façade, and a statue of a robed woman on the right is nearly engulfed by its garden surroundings. The Schwabe drawing gives more detail of this statue (fig. 63). After the casting of the spell, Bakst planned for a lilac curtain to rise from the stage floor. Cyril Beaumont describes it thus: “A tiny gap appears at the roots of the first wall of flowers. It widens slowly to form a narrow arch through which can be seen the Lilac Fairy, now motionless, her cloak outspread by two child pages, her eyes raised heavenwards, her arms arched above her head to sustain her gleaming wand, her form luminous in the silvery rays of the rising moon” (fig. 64). A mechanical failure in rehearsal and on opening night caused the lilac curtain to stop partway. As Beaumont notes elsewhere, “This effect, which Bakst had designed with such loving care, was not easy to realize.” [129] The 1890 version of this scene, in comparison, emphasized symmetry through the placement of large vases on the extreme right and left of the stage and a central statue of Poseidon with raised trident at the rear (fig. 65). Arching trees lean toward the center and meet overhead, covering the sky in foliage. The buildings on each side, though matched in mass, are different and lend some variety to the scenery. It should be noted that Benois’ design for Le Pavillon d’Armide (1909) was used by the Ballets Russes in the spring of 1922 for the reconstituted Le Mariage d’Aurore, [130] as Bakst’s sets and costumes had been impounded. Benois’s backdrop showed his characteristic watercolor style; the large topiaries and fountains are in axial symmetry, and the design recalls the gardens of Versailles (fig. 66). His backdrop was delicate and pleasing, yet static, whereas Bakst’s design focused on creating a dynamic sense of drama and energy. 33	Fig.62 Fig.63 Fig.64 Fig.65 Fig.66
	Bakst’s costumes for Scene II reflect the rustic setting in which the Village Maidens and Youths dance with garlands. The program notes that sixteen years have passed. Most of the guards, pages, and lackeys are absent. Diaghilev excised the passages of music relating to les tricoteuses (the knitters) and therefore there are no such costumes. The King has new raiment, (fig. 67) but there is no evidence of a new costume for the Queen. She apparently wore her Scene I dress. Aurora enters as a young princess wearing her rose-colored dress (fig. 68). Studio photos show Olga Spessivtseva (simplified to Spessiva in the program) and Vera Trefilova wearing the Rose Adagio dress from this scene (fig. 69). The Lilac Fairy, Cantalabutte, and Carabosse wear the same costumes as before. The costumes of the Italian, Spanish, and English Princes survive (fig. 70), but not the Indian Prince (design, fig. 71). The program lists four of Princess Aurora’s friends, and also sixteen Village Maidens and Village Youths. The Sotheby inventory contained fourteen Village Youth costumes, and twenty-five Village Maiden costumes. This implies that there were sixteen Youths, and possibly thirty-two Maidens in the original production. Some of the extra Maidens (that is, those not matched with Youths) may have had roles such as holding the violins that Aurora bends near, cupping her ear, in choreography that in many later productions has been deleted. The detailed descriptions of the costumes for the Youths and Maidens give a good portrayal of the masses of color for the ensemble dance in this scene, the Garland Dance (fig. 72). 34	Fig.67 Fig.68 Fig.69 Fig.70 Fig.71 Fig.72
	Costume for one of the Village Maidens in the Garland Dance in Scene II Dress inspired by French local peasant costumes; blue-grey velvet bodice trimmed with vermilion ribbon; puffed velvet elbow-length sleeves bordered with vermilion and apple-green silk, slashed to reveal white cotton under-sleeves painted with vermilion stripes; white organdie collar with a pinked edge appliqué with stripes of vermilion and apple-green silk ribbon and painted with vermilion spots. The bodice parting to reveal a triangle of lemon-yellow repp stomacher adorned with a zig-zag of gold braid. Belt of vermilion ribbon fastened in a bow left of centre, a vermilion crêpe-de-chine over-skirt looped up on the right to reveal a calf-length white satin-taffeta petticoat appliqué with horizontal bands of apple-green silk ribbon and painted with a flower pattern in vermilion and apple-green. …. Costume for one of the Village Youths in the Garland Dance in Scene II Orange felt livery suit, the jacket having epaulettes and slashed over-sleeves; with collar, cuffs and facings of white silk painted with apple-green stripes; the epaulettes, the slash of the sleeves and the facings sewn with steel buttons with an attached waistcoat of white felt trimmed with apple-green piping and sewn with steel buttons. A belt of apricot velvet edged with gold braid. Knee-length orange pantaloons sewn at the side with steel buttons. A black felt hat trimmed with green feathers. [131] Bakst assembled a complex palette for the Garland Dance, with the Youths in orange, the Maidens predominantly in vermilion with contrasting areas in lemon yellow and dark blue-gray. Apple green piping for both men and women probably matched the green in the garlands. The detail invested in ribbons, embroidery, striping, and steel buttons is extraordinary, particularly for so many ensemble dancers. In addition there are extant designs not mentioned in the program. These include a design for Elphes “qui aident à la bonne fée de faire pousser la verdure…au moins 8 costumes pareils” [“who aid the good fairy in raising the curtain of vines…at least 8 costumes the same”] (fig. 73). Bakst also wrote to the costumier, “Il faut choisir pour ce rôle des fillettes de 8-10 ans.” [“One must choose for this role young girls 8-10 years old.”] [132] This design is identified for The Sleeping Princess, but it may have been a design drawn early in the process that was never realized, since Beaumont’s description and the Schwabe illustration both indicate two child pages around Lilac and the lilac curtain. There is a design for Dames de la Cour (fig . 74) that is annotated for the costumier and specified for six dancers, but there is no corroboration for this in either the program or Sotheby catalogue. Combining the program list with an assumption of thirty-two Village Maidens, sixteen Village Youths, six Dames de la Cour, and no Elves, there were at least sixty-eight people on stage during Scene II. If two child pages are included the total reaches seventy. The number of original designs Bakst supplied for this scene thus is estimated at ten. 35	Fig.73 Fig.74
	The Vision, Scene III According to contemporary description, Bakst supplied two backdrops for this scene. These were changed while the main curtain was raised, under the “cover” of a mist of gauze curtains. During the hunt scene the backdrop displayed only forest; for the Vision the enchanted castle was revealed. Accounts by Levinson and Beaumont supply useful information in the absence of photographs of this scene. Beaumont, writing in 1921, gives a detailed description of the décor that opened Scene III: “A hundred years have passed and the action takes place at the close of an autumn day. The curtain rises to reveal a forest glade fringed by a narrow stream, its course dotted with stones and islets. To right and left stretch serried groups of massive oaks, their gnarled roots lost among giant boulders. As the eye looks upward one is astonished at the length of the groping boughs; so inextricably mingled, so intertwined as to form a natural roof. It is the hour of sunset for the water is rendered iridescent by the fading ray that falls aslant its surface.”[133] In an account written later, Beaumont notes another opening-night malfunction with the stage machinery. “When the Prince steps into the Fairy’s frail barque to be carried to the mysterious abode of the sleeping Princess (an effect produced by a panoramic background [?] which is eventually blotted out by a deepening mist, simulated by the lowering of a succession of gauze curtains), the machinery failed. Instead of the gauzes descending one behind the other, they piled up on a piece of projecting scenery until they resembled a monster bale of muslin on the shelf of a draper’s shop. Diaghilev paled with anger at these blemishes and during the intervals burst upon the stage like a Fury.” [134] The backdrop may have been changed behind the gauze curtains. In the Mariinsky version the boat was stationary while a panoramic scene depicted the journey to the shore of the castle; Levinson reported that “instead of the panorama, impracticable on the stage of the Alhambra, there [was] a simple change of scenery.” [135] Bakst’s scenic décor in this act accentuated the changing mood of the ballet from the public world of display and artifice to the private one of Prince Charming’s emotional longing. The waning light of an autumn day suggested, according to Levinson, “a profound and somber melancholy, whereby the tormented Prince, enamoured of a dream, is further distracted. Bare tree trunks, brown shadows, water of a leaden blue.” Like a melancholy Werther, the Prince broods while the others amuse themselves with a farandole and other dances (Diaghilev eliminated the Colin-Maillard, or Blindman’s Bluff). Levinson describes the mood of the décor: “Against the noble sadness of a pearly-grey sky, a white donjon stands out, massive but elegant, with battlements, towers and belfreys. In the foreground a light green forest; further back, somber blue-green trees, bristling, menacing, form a sinister palisade around the accursed castle. It is a finely simple and poetical expression of the desolate.” Bakst’s earlier designs also show an oppressive forest setting. Three different versions, all in watercolor, date from 1916 and were not used by Pavlova. One design depicts dense foliage and a low, dark blue sky (fig. 25). A second contains similar foliage, but shows a winding stone stairway visible through the brush that leads to Aurora’s canopied bed under an arch. Only small patches of sky peep through the dense woods (fig.26). Neither scene contains a stream. The third design from 1916 shows the white castle in the background and what appears to be a stream in the lower portion (fig. 75). A pencil sketch extant from 1921 shows that Bakst considered adding two elements: onion domes and tall towers to the castle, and the silhouette of a massive rearing horse and rider on the ramparts (fig. 76). According to the scenography reproduced in The Sleeping Princess souvenir program, Bakst’s final version retained the horse but removed the onion domes (fig. 77). 36	Fig.25 Fig.26 Fig.75 Fig.76 Fig.77
	Bakst’s addition of a stream and the equestrian statue, while not a major component in terms of the artistic composition of the set, is nonetheless of symbolic significance in Scene III. As a part of Bakst’s design for this scene, which is infused with melancholy, longing, and somber colors, the rearing horse recalls a landmark from his lost city of St. Petersburg, the Bronze Horseman statue that stands in a large square beside the Neva River (fig. 78). An important component of St. Petersburg mythology, this statue lay at the center of poems by Pushkin and the Symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok – poems reprinted and discussed in two journals to which Bakst contributed, Mir iskusstva and Apollon. Catherine the Great commissioned the statue as a dedication to Peter the Great, the founder of St. Petersburg. It was completed in 1782 and depicts the tsar on a rearing horse, arm reaching toward the Neva. This square was the site of the 1825 Decembrist uprising in which a group of officers rebelled against Tsar Nicholas I; the rebellion was quashed, and severe reprisals resulted. Pushkin composed his epic poem The Bronze Horseman: A Petersburg Tale (1833, published posthumously in 1837) partly in response to the uprising. The statue became known by the poem’s title, and the original Senate Square later became known as Decembrist Square. The following lines appear in the introductory section of Pushkin’s poem: There, by the billows desolate, He stood, with mighty thoughts elate, And gazed; but in the distance only A sorry skiff on the broad spate Of Neva drifted seaward, lonely. The moss-grown miry banks with rare Hovels were dotted here and there Where wretched Finns for shelter crowded; The murmuring woodlands had no share Of sunshine, all in mist beshrouded. … I love thee, city of Peter's making; I love thy harmonies austere, And Neva's sovran [sic] waters breaking Along her banks of granite sheer; Thy traceried iron gates; thy sparkling, Yet moonless, meditative gloom And thy transparent twilight darkling. [136] 37	Fig.78
Fig.79	The mood of Bakst’s “desolate” backdrop, as described by Levinson, bears a resemblance to Pushkin’s own desolate and gloomy landscape, especially the lonely skiff, the “murmuring woodlands,” and the twilight darkling. Diaghilev and the miriskussniki, as well as many other Symbolist writers, had long admired Pushkin’s work. As part of Mir iskusstva’s reassessment of past artistic and literary heritages in Russia, Diaghilev published a double issue of the journal in 1899 (Nos. 13 and 14) solely about Pushkin; this included articles by the Symbolists Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Minsky, and Sologub. In 1904 (No. 1), Mir iskusstva devoted considerable space, over thirty pages, to reprinting The Bronze Horseman with new illustrations by Benois (fig. 79). Separately, Blok took up some of the themes of Pushkin’s poem in his own verse, Petr, originally published 1904. Innokenty Annensky referred to Blok’s poem in his essay, “On Contemporary Lyrism,” and included an excerpt and analysis of Blok’s poem. Annensky’s essay appeared in Apollon issues No. 1, 2, and 3 in 1909 and overlapped with Bakst’s essay on classicism in art, which appeared in issue Nos. 2 and 3. In his essay Annensky describes Blok as “a rare example of a born Symbolist. Blok’s perceptions are vague, his words elastic, and his verses, it seems, cannot help but be Symbolic.” The following are Blok’s verses, as cited by Annensky in his essay: He sleeps while the sunset is scarlet And his armour grows sleepily pinker. And with a quiet whistle through the mist The serpent, trampled by the hoof, looks at his reflection. Dense, dark nights will descend. The serpent will uncoil above the houses. In Peter’s outstretched hand The flame of a torch will dance. Threads of street lights will be lit, Store windows and sidewalks will glisten. Couples will stretch out in rows In the twinkling of dull city squares. Gloom will wrap everyone in its cloaks. A glance drown in a beckoning glance. Let innocence from a corner Keep begging for mercy. There, on the cliff, the merry Tsar Has waved a foul-smelling incense burner, And the city’s fumes have Clouded the beckoning lamp with its robe. Everyone, answer the call, to the hunt! To the crossroads of moonlit streets! The whole city is full of voices, Male – clamorous, female – shrill. He will protect his city, And, turning crimson before dawn, A sword flares up in his outstretched hand Over a capital calming down.[137] 38
	Blok’s themes of gloom, sunset, and dense night echo the imagery of Pushkin’s poem. Adrian Wanner points out that “The fact that Blok borrowed his sculptural imagery from Pushkin does not mean that his myth is merely derivative. The theme becomes organically linked with Blok’s own poetic worldview and personal mythology. Pushkin’s destructive sculpture, in itself a rather sinister element, turns into an even more haunting and threatening presence in the ‘fallen world’ of Blok’s St. Petersburg.” [138] In Blok’s Petr, a threatening power and a rally to the hunt are not unrelated to the mood and events in The Sleeping Princess’s Scene III. Several other poems by Blok consider statuary: Statuia (1903) and two poems written in the aftermath the revolution of 1905, Visia nad gorodom vsemirnym… and Eshche prekrasno seroe nebo. In each, Blok considers the immobility of the form captured in stone, and its ability to awaken. The rearing horse in Scene III, then, does not bear any direct relation to the Vision scene. But like the meandering passageways and faraway hallways in the Christening backdrop, this distant silhouette suggests hidden meanings. For Bakst, the Bronze Horseman evoked a city he could no longer enter: St. Petersburg, girded by “bristling, menacing… somber blue-green trees [that] form a sinister palisade around the accursed castle” (in Levinson’s evocative words). The statue represents a central theme of The Sleeping Princess, the arrest of time as well as the potential for re-awakening; it embodies synchronic and diachronic time. Apart from its physical presence, Bakst’s silhouette bears accretions of the past, the poetic images of Pushkin and Blok. It may also have been a memento mori; Blok died on August 7, 1921, at the age of 40, just as Bakst was immersing himself in The Sleeping Princess. Bakst’s visual reference to interrelated poetic images, and his personal feelings toward St. Petersburg and Blok, deepen the sense of loss and melancholy in this scene. The visual reference to the Bronze Horseman also provides a thread connecting his choices for the décor to the artist’s Russian Symbolist past. 39
Fig.80 Fig.81 Fig.82 Fig.83 Fig.84	Bakst reflected the passage of one hundred years of time in his preparation of the costumes for Scene III, the Hunt and Vision by updating the dress styles to the eighteenth century. The color palette of the costumes was still vibrant, but muted by heavy overlays of gold and silver brocade that deepened in the twilight setting. In the principal roles, Prince Charming wears a scarlet overcoat and the Countess a cadmium-yellow hunting dress, trimmed in dark gold and black. (fig. 80) The Sotheby catalogue describes the costumes thus: Tchernicheva’s Costume as the Countess in Act III Two-piece eighteenth-century lady’s hunting costume. The long-skirted coat of lemon-yellow velvet, with white silk revers bound in silver braid and ivory moiré silk epaulettes bound in gold braid and adorned with black moiré silk bows, from the left one of which hangs a shoulder knot formed by six bands of moiré silk bound in gold braid with gold fringe; ruched bands of white lace descend from the front of the shoulders to the waist; round the waist diminutive padded paniers of black moiré silk trimmed with gold fringe; the cuffs of black moiré silk bordered with silver braid and embellished with an appliqué pattern of circles and lozenges in ivory moiré silk bound in gold and silver braid; the whole coat sprinkled with large passion flowers in silver thread intersprinkled with flecks of insect-like woolen embroidery in peacock-blue and Solferino-pink. Long-trained skirt of lemon-yellow velvet bordered with five bands of silver braid in front; both skirt and train overlaid with heavy embroidery in silver thread of a floral design, intersprinkled like the bodice with flecks of woollen embroidery in pink and blue. A wide-brimmed hat of black moiré silk with a feather made of gold bullion fringe. …. Vladimirov’s Costume as the Prince in Scene III Long-skirted, eighteenth-century coat in scarlet velvet: the bold and simple bands of gold embroidery round the collar, down the front, on the hips, round the shoulders, down the sleeves, across the back and down the tail of the coat give it a military aspect. Cuffs of fawn felt overlaid with silver brocade, silver lace and gold braid. On the left shoulder a knot of light bottle-green silk ribbon. The panels of a false attached waistcoat are bottle-green with bands of gold lace. On the left breast the Order of the Holy Ghost in silver and gilt metal. Black felt tricorne, bound with gold braid and trimmed with black ostrich feathers. [139] The mimed role of Gallison, the Prince’s tutor, was diminished because of Diaghilev’s decision to eliminate the Colin-Maillard dance in which the nobles mock the old drunkard (fig. 81). In other costumes for Scene III, the five Dukes and five Duchesses wore costumes in lime green and emerald green velvet and satin, stenciled over with floral patterns in gold paint. Each Duke wore yellow satin knee-breeches that peeked out from under his long Hungarian style coat. Each Duchess wore a ginger brown skirt overlaid with a lime green silk sash (fig. 82). The four Baronesses were clothed in long jackets in a jade color with a heavy, printed gold pattern; a similar pattern adorned the riding skirt in chocolate brown. Buckle reports that the outfits were made of a “bought theatrical material.” In the musical score annotated by Diaghilev and Stravinsky the Danse des comtesses occurs next; however, there are no countesses listed in the program (other than the one, in love with Prince Charming) and no other surviving costumes. Evidently this dance was eliminated, or possibly danced by the other nobles. The six Marquis and Marchionesses wore costumes of royal blue and turquoise, but muted by “ornate scrolls in gold paint bordered in gold embroidery,” and bands of silver and gold lace along the jackets and skirts (fig. 83). Bakst used green as a contrasting color. The cuffs and breeches of each Marquis were in apple green velvet. Each Marchioness wore an apple green felt hat “trimmed with gold lace and with a white and turquoise-blue ostrich feather.” [140] The costume for the Marchioness was based on Bakst’s 1916 design for a Baroness (fig. 84); he retained the blue color from the earlier design. 40
		Fig.85 Fig.86 Fig.87 Fig.88 Fig.89
	The ancillary roles for Scene III include four Huntsmen and at least nine Beaters (nine costumes were recovered and sold at the Sotheby auction). The Huntsmen’s costumes (fig. 85) reflect some of the blues and greens of the nobles. Costume for one of the Four Huntsmen in Scene III Long-skirted, eighteenth-century coat of bottle-green velvet, adorned with vertical bands of gold and silver brocade and with two bands of a narrower way gold brocade ribbon which overlaps the brocade stripes either side of the opening; an attached waistcoat of sky-blue silk barred with silver braid showing in the opening; the magenta velvet cuffs bordered with a different gold and silver brocade, with a band of the same wavy gold brocade ribbon.[141] The beaters (fig. 86) wore yellow livery coats and chocolate brown breeches, with blouse stripes and fastenings in “Solferino-pink” and vermilion. In the second part of the scene, the Vision, Lilac returned in her fairy costume. Aurora wore a new dress, but neither Bakst’s design nor the actual costume appears to be extant. A studio photo in which the Prince partners Aurora indicates that he danced this scene in his full costume with high boots (fig. 87). [142] The programme lists twelve nymphs. The costumes have not survived, but there are two designs, one for Young Girls and the other for “les jeunes filles fantastiques” (fig. 88), that would seem appropriate for nymphs. The Schwabe illustration (fig. 89) indicates that the design for Young Girls was used for the Nymphs in the Vision scene. A comparison of extant costumes with the program list indicates at least fifty-six bodies onstage for Scene II; of these, Bakst provided ten new designs. 41
Fig.90 Fig.91 Fig.92 Fig.93 Fig.94	The Awakening, Scene IV The awakening of the Princess Aurora is the pivotal moment of the ballet in terms of the libretto. Perhaps recognizing that this scene is undistinguished choreographically and musically, Bakst chose to emphasize the importance of the scene by visually locating the emotional core of The Sleeping Beauty here, through his intimate and in fact very personal interpretation of the breaking of the spell (fig. 90). Bakst’s design for the Awakening resonates with an important Russian Symbolist theme, Blok’s cult of the Beautiful Lady. The gradual shift from line to color that occurs from scene to scene is now completed, and Bakst employs his most vivid tones in the scenery, deep red and pink hues embellished with gold. Shadows and heavy draperies soften the corners and edges. An angled beam of moonlight indicating the royal bed and a glow behind the louvered windows suggest the transition from night to dawn. A stage photo from The Sketch, published on November 16, 1921, shows Prince Charming and Aurora behind the curtains draped on either side of the bed (fig. 91). The decorative element of overlapping curves, resembling gold sheaves, can be discerned. Unfortunately the rest of the scenography is not visible. However, Bakst’s conception could not be realized onstage. The difficulty of moving the bed and massive eagle in the allotted time proved impossible in dress rehearsals, which were already plagued with technical problems. This Awakening design was jettisoned at the last minute and evidently contributed to the delayed opening of The Sleeping Princess. Nonetheless it is a remarkable piece of theatrical design and deserves detailed consideration. Bakst’s project for the Awakening reveals his intention of creating a built-out room with painted walls, swags of real curtains, and constructed furniture, unlike the other Sleeping Princess scenes that used painted backdrops accented with a few stage properties. The intense rose color of the curtains and canopies alludes to Aurora’s Rose Adagio in Scene II, in which she wore a rose-colored costume and received roses from her four suitors. Unlike the ceremonial hall, spacious garden, and forest glade designed for large gatherings, Aurora’s bedroom is intimate and warm. The distant views in the first three scenes are absent; though light peeks in through an alcove, nothing can be seen outside. A mural recalling the Rothschild panels adorns Aurora’s room. An elongated statue on the left wall depicts a naked woman with arms upraised. Aurora’s massive bed, piled high with coverlets, pillows, and heavy gold and rose canopies, is the focal point of the design. The tiny head of the princess can just be discerned among the folds and layers. Poised atop the crown of the voluminous canopy is an enormous eagle whose wings appear to stretch half the width of the stage. With one clawed foot he draws back the curtains as the Lilac Fairy leads the barely visible Prince to his appointed task, the waking of Aurora. The dozing king is depicted slumping in a chair, a minor figure. Here the set overpowers the human figures in scale and color. The imagery that Bakst brought to the foreground represents the fate of King Florestan’s royal lineage, symbolized by a giant imperial eagle perched above a giant pudendum. Bakst’s sexualization of the space in Scene IV was foreshadowed in a sketch he made on Savoy Hotel stationery, presumably around the time of his talks with Diaghilev and Stravinsky in summer 1921 (some of the talks occurred at the London hotel where Diaghilev usually stayed) (fig. 92). The bed and columns are symmetrically placed and there is no eagle. This sketch resembles Charles de Wailly’s 1778 design for the palace of Gluck’s Armide (fig. 93) in its axial orientation and festoons of garlands and “barley-sugar” columns. In the Awakening design with the eagle, Bakst chose to move away from a baroque model. Bakst evidently reconsidered his initial design, and the “barley-sugar” columns and arches eventually graced the Scene V backdrop for The Sleeping Princess, the Wedding. Yet the Savoy sketch contains the main sexual element apparent in the planned scenography for the Awakening. This stands in contrast with the corresponding 1890 Mariinsky set (fig. 94). In Aurora’s room, a small, dark opening in the rear wall of the set reveals a glimpse of the princess’s head lying on a pillow. Bakst makes quite explicit what seems merely implicit in the Mariinsky production. 42
Fig.95 Fig.96 Fig.97	Bakst had always been fascinated, even obsessed, with the sensuality and sexuality of the female figure. [143] Many of his early costumes and sets for Diaghilev shocked and titillated audiences; the eroticism in Bakst’s work was heightened by the exotic settings depicted in a vivid color palette and the presence, at times, of violence in the libretto. For example, his set for Thamar in 1912 (fig. 95) provides an early example of large-scale imagery of female genitalia, where Bakst’s bold assertion of sexuality matches the tale of the Georgian queen. [144] The Sleeping Beauty, however, seems far-removed from the exotic locales and “barbaric” events of many Ballets Russes productions, being essentially a tale of innocence, coming-of-age, and love. Given Bakst’s nostalgic look at the ballet and its Symbolist tinge, the explicit sexuality in the Awakening design can be interpreted in light of Blok’s cult of the Beautiful Lady, which eroticized ideal beauty. [145] Blok drew on some of the ideas of the poet Vladimir Solov’ev (1853-1900) about the Eternal Feminine and Plato’s Sophia, and poeticized the development of his relationship with Lyubov Mendeleeva into Verses about the Beautiful Lady (the first cycle was published in Novyi Put’ in 1903). [146] Representing far more than local gossip and the idealization of love, Blok’s Beautiful Lady verses, over 800 poems in all, were a significant contribution to Russian Symbolism. In the following, “I already sense You” (1901), Blok explores themes of transformation and melancholy. I already sense You. Years pass by – I imagine You always looking the same. The whole horizon is fiery and Your appearance is near, But I’m afraid You’ll change Your form. Having finally changed Your familiar features, You’ll arouse insolent suspicions. Oh, how sadly, how low I’ll fall, A victim of my fatal dreams! How bright the horizon is! Radiance is near. But I’m afraid You’ll change Your form.[147] Like the statuary in the Vision scene, the immobile Princess lies rigid and constrained, but with the capacity to awaken. In addition to the canopy bed, the other dominant object in the Awakening scene is the eagle. Through its sheer mass, Bakst compels the observer to consider the meaning of this complex and polysemic symbol. This eagle wears a crown, and rests on a larger one on the canopy, suggesting monarchy: eagles have been associated with royalty for centuries, from the Habsburgs to the Russian tsars and others. The Russian double-headed eagle was taken from Constantinople in the fifteenth century and became a symbol of the tsars (fig. 96). The Russian imperial eagle adorned the Imperial Box at the Mariinsky Theatre. The two heads of the eagle symbolized looking both East and West, just as The Sleeping Beauty looked both East and West. Judging by the resemblance of Bakst’s Savoy sketch in 1921 to the de Wailly Armide design, Bakst may have done additional research at the Bibliothèque Nationale while working on The Sleeping Princess commission. As Deborah Howard points out, both the de Wailly design and a book of engravings based on Giuseppe Bibiena’s architectural designs, dedicated to Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, are in the Cabinet d’Estampes. On Giuseppe’s title page is a portrait of Charles under a pavilion or canopy (fig. 97). [148] There is a crown on top and a double-headed eagle to the left. A beak and one claw draw back the canopy in a gesture similar to that of Bakst’s eagle. 43
Fig.98 Fig.14 Fig.99	There were other eagles and dark birds in Bakst’s artistic life. Bakst designed a woodcut for the Mir iskusstva letterhead around 1898 that featured a noble eagle sitting in profile atop a snowy peak (fig. 98). Bakst wrote to Benois at the time explaining his imagery: “ ‘The World of Art’ is higher than anything earthly, it is next to the stars where it reigns haughtily, mysteriously, and in solitude like an eagle on a snowy peak and in this case we have an ‘eagle of the midnight countries,’ i.e. of the north of Russia.” [149] The expression and profile of Bakst’s graphic eagle are similar to those in the Awakening project, although the wings of the Mir iskusstva eagle are folded. In another early project related to Diaghilev, the catalogue for the Russian Art exhibition in Paris 1906 contained double-headed eagles with crowns, on the front and back covers. [150] The dark raven in the Rothschild panel has been noted above. Bakst kept a stuffed raven on his study desk (fig. 14) in homage to Poe’s poem The Raven, which had been translated into Russian in the 1890s and had been an inspiration to many Russian Symbolists.[151] With its imposing wingspan and sharp beak, the Scene IV eagle also has a protective role with regard to Princess Aurora. By literally pulling back the curtain as the Prince approaches, the eagle acknowledges that the Prince is the chosen one (that is, chosen by the Lilac Fairy in the previous scene). Bakst envisioned a scenic stand-in for the Lilac Fairy who explicitly and implicitly, through her harp timbres, keeps watch over Aurora. Eagles and dark birds approach talismanic significance in Bakst’s personal aesthetic, and evoke memories of his Symbolist days in St. Petersburg. Because Bakst’s intended scenography was unworkable onstage, he was forced to improvise a simple alternative only a few days before the opening of The Sleeping Princess. Once again, he drew upon imagery from a Pushkin poem, in this case The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights (1833). Bakst devised a plain tomb upon which the sleeping Aurora lay, waiting like Snow White for the Prince’s kiss. The setting also evokes Blok’s last Beautiful Lady poem, “There they are – the steps into the tomb.” Bakst placed the tomb downstage, in front of the backdrop for the last act, which lay in shadows (fig. 99). Beaumont describes the mise-en-scène thus: With the raising of the curtain the spectator is introduced to a vast hall in King Florestan’s palace. Everything is in deep shadow and a monstrous web guarded by two enormous spiders hangs from the ceiling to the floor. A dusty beam of light illumines the centre of the apartment where is set a grey stone tomb. Upon the top of this reclines the Princess Aurora, fast asleep….Presently a dim figure emerges from the left. As it draws closer it is possible to recognise the red coat and feathered hat of Prince Charming. He picks his way with cautious steps the while he remarks wonderingly the evidences of decay and neglect that everywhere confront him. He espies the tomb and walks towards it. He climbs the steps at its base and regards with sorrow the incarnation of the vision of the forest. He bends over and kisses her lips. There is a crash of thunder, the Princess opens her eyes and slowly sits upright. The Prince takes her hand and lifts her to the ground. There is a burst of triumphant music, and in a moment the palace is ablaze with lights. The tomb disappears below the floor and the web and the spiders crumble to powder. Now, the scene presented is one of unparalleled magnificence. [152] 44
	This image of a sleeping princess on a bier, or encased in glass, appeared in Pushkin’s poem, which was in turn based on Snow White from the poet’s copy of Vieux contes (a French translation of the Grimm Brothers’ book of fairy tales). This tale is known in the West as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in which the princess, poisoned by the golden apple, lies in a crystal coffin hidden in a cave until her fiancé rescues her: … In pursuit of his sweet bride Through the country far and wide Still Prince Yelisei goes riding, Weeping bitterly. No tidings! For no matter whom he asks People either turn their backs Or most rudely rock with laughter: No one knows what he is after. … [He asks the Sun and the Moon, who suggest he speak with the Wind] Yelisei, not losing courage, To the Wind's abode now hurried. …"O hear!" Said the Wind in turmoil blowing. "Where a quiet stream is flowing Stands a mountain high and steep In it lies a cavern deep; In this cave in shadows dismal Sways a coffin, made of crystal. Hung by chains from pillars six. Round it barren land in which No man ever meets another. In that tomb your bride discover!" With a howl the Wind was gone. Yelisei wept loud and long. To the barren land he journeyed Desperately, sadly yearning Once again to see his bride. On he rode. A mountain high Rose before him, soaring steeply From a land laid waste completely. At its foot—an entrance dim. Yelisei went quickly in. There, he saw, in shadows dismal Swayed a coffin made of crystal Where the Princess lay at rest In the deep sleep of the blest. And the Prince in tears dissolving Threw himself upon the coffin... And it broke! The maiden straight Came to life, sat up, in great Wonder looked about and yawning As she set her bed see-sawing Said with pretty arms outstretched: "Gracious me! How long I've slept!" Down she stepped from out the coffin. O the sighing and the sobbing! Carrying his bride, he strode Back to daylight. Home they rode, Making pleasant conversation Till they reached their destination. Swiftly rumour spread around: "The Princess is safe and sound!" [153] Pushkin’s fairy tale theme was taken up and explored by Blok in some of his own verses. In the final Beautiful Lady poem, he expressed a darker side of the lover perhaps laying to rest his beautiful one, or his idea of the beautiful one. By the time the last cycle was published, in 1904, Blok wrote in his journal that his “former devotion to the Beautiful Lady and to his own wife was over, exhausted.” [154] There they are – the steps into the tomb. And between us – no one. We are alone. Sleep, tender companion of days Flooded with fantastic light. You repose in a white tomb. You call with a smile: do not wake me. Golden locks on your forehead. A golden icon on your chest. I have celebrated death lit with light, Having touched your waxen hand, All else the bottomless earth Has concealed in a light blue fog. Sleep – no one will disturb your repose. We are the commencement of unknown roads. A lighted castle burns here Through all the dreary night. [155] Through necessity, in a moment of improvised staging Bakst drew upon the poetic images in the Pushkin and Blok poems and visually conflated The Sleeping Beauty and The Snow White fairy tales. 45
Fig.23 Fig.24 Fig.100 Fig.101 Fig.102 Fig.103	The Wedding, Scene V For the last scene, the Wedding, Bakst returned to the architectural style of the Christening. As in Scene I, Bakst toned down the colors in the scenography in order to emphasize vertical lines and the curve of arches. Bakst used the formal structure of an atrium to reflect the public nature of the Wedding. The high blue sky and plump columns twisted with vines, called barley-sugar columns, are light and festive and complement the celebratory divertissements. Levinson commented on the airiness of this scene: “The back of the stage is rounded off in a half circle of white and gold, veined with grey. It is almost a forest of lightly turned columns, but with nothing ‘baroque’ about it, nothing of the heaviness of the ‘official style’ of the period.” [156] Bakst’s design is closer to rococo than the Scene I design, reflecting the passage of time during the hundred years of sleep. Several extant sketches demonstrate the evolution of Bakst’s conception for this scene. Two are drawings and date from his 1916 work for Pavlova. A pencil sketch (fig. 23) shows the main elements in place for his design: barley-sugar columns, large arches in the foreground, and a curve of arches in the background open to visible sky. There are also three substantial statues protruding into the sky, a kind of visual link between terrestrial and celestial realms. A second drawing from 1916 (fig. 24) is more refined. The double arch in the foreground is lifted so that only its lower curves are visible. Bakst inserted a large curved staircase at the left. He made the column structures more precise, added a balustrade above the distant curve, and gave the archways in the background more depth. A wide esplanade of steps now leads toward the rear archways. Four groups of indistinct statues (possibly topiaries) rest on the balustrade and extend into the sky. Three pieces of statuary are visible: a grouping of two figures with upraised arms near the entrance stairway, a rearing horse to the right of center, and another statue, indistinct, in the foreground on the far right side of the sketch. A third design, probably in ink and watercolors, is reproduced (unfortunately in black and white) in Levinson’s book, The Designs of Léon Bakst for The Sleeping Princess (fig. 100). Though undated, Bakst probably produced it in 1921 as the final model upon which the scenography would be based. In this painting, the large inverted shell motif is visible between the barley-sugar columns on the left. The entrance stairway and esplanade remain, as do the two statues with raised arms. The statue just to the right of center is now discernible as a naked figure bridling a rearing horse. In the far-right foreground, the lower portion of a rearing horse and a torso are visible. Figurines are set atop the distant balustrade, and paned windows bulge outward from the double archways at the rear. The scenic décor for Scene V survives and indicates how Bakst’s conception on paper was translated into stage scenery. The décor consists of a backdrop, two side legs, and a pelmet that hung across the top above the front of the stage (fig. 101) and (fig. 102). The side legs hang at an indeterminate distance upstage from the backdrop, but behind the pelmet. The de Basil company used this scenery for its own production of Aurora’s Wedding. [157] Buckle wrote the following catalogue descriptions for these items: Back Drop from Scene V in ‘The Sleeping Princess’ An architectural scene in golden monochrome and in the style of the Bibiena family. Huge, dizzying arches open on a semi-circular court whose arcade is topped by a balustrade with baroque statues; the arches being supported by groups of slender ‘barley-sugar’ columns. To the left a group of classical statuary, a naked youth worshipping watched by a naked man; to the right, high up on a projecting cornice an equestrian statue, the rearing horse being fantastically foreshortened. White cumulus clouds sweep diagonally across the turquoise sky. peinture à la détrempe [tempura] on canvas 33 ft by 46 ft …. Two Legs for Scene V in ‘The Sleeping Princess’ To the left on a pedestal, before column and arched doorways, a Hellenistic statue of Narcissus with arms curled over his head like Nijinsky in ‘Le Spectre de la Rose’. To the right, groups of narrow twisted columns supporting a double arch. …. 36 ft by 17 ft …. A Border for Scene V in ‘The Sleeping Princess’ This takes the form of a scalloped and tassellated pelmet to be used across the top of the full back-drop. …. Length 46 ft 6 in.[158] The stage photo (fig. 103) indicates that a dais was placed on the side opposite the entrance stairway. 46
Fig.104 Fig.105 Fig.106 Fig.101	Unlike his Scene I backdrop, Bakst did not use a specific baroque model for the Scene V. Rather, he incorporated several elements relatively common in Bibiena and other designs, in particular the barley-sugar columns, into a configuration of his own. There are several historical antecedents Bakst may have consulted. Howard identifies two: Charles de Wailly’s design of the Palais d’Armide for Gluck’s opera Armide, in the Cabinet d’Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; and a Giuseppe Bibiena engraving titled Scena della Festa Teatrale in Architteture e prospettive dedicate alla Maesta di Carlo Sesto, Imperador de’Romani, 1740. [159] A third possibility is the Atrium of “Royal Palace of the Sun” or “The Palace of Diana” by Francesco Bibiena (fig. 104). It does not appear that Bakst modeled his design directly on a Bibiena creation, though many of the festi theatrali contain the plump columns twisted with vines. Francesco’s Atrium shows four barley-sugar columns per pedestal, an unusual feature for Bibiena designs; it is a prominent aspect of Bakst’s Wedding décor. The de Wailly Armide design also features the distinctive columns, but they are arrayed in axial perspective. In Armide, de Wailly festooned the stage flats with leafy garlands; Bakst’s design contains only stone and sky. [160] Bakst’s avoidance of symmetry and an axial perspective in the final scene injects a note of discord and runs counter to developments in the music, choreography, and libretto. After all, Scene V enacts the dénouement, the breaking of the spell and the happy union foretold for Aurora and Florestan’s kingdom in the beginning of the tale. The metaphorical obstacle implied in the scena per angolo is now removed. The music, no longer disrupted by Carabosse’s dissonances, attains the predicted key of G. Aurora and Prince Désiré dance their grand pas de deux, amid a display of character dances and other entertainments that form Scene V’s divertissements. Florestan’s realm is secured in choreographic terms by the orderly Sarabande, Polacca, Finale, and Apotheosis. Though Bakst retained the barley-sugar columns as a design element, he did not adopt the axial perspective of the de Wailly Armide with its layers of flats. Nor did he follow the symmetry of the original Mariinsky scenography. The Mariinsky production featured short columns, a low yellowish sky, and a soft canopy formed by foliage at the top of the backdrop. A fountain and distant castle are located low on the horizon (fig. 105). Lush, verdant flora rises above columns small in scale, and the fountain and castle serve as reminders of the Lilac Fairy and seat of Florestan’s realm. [161] Yet, despite Bakst’s open sky and light colors, the foreshortened perspective accentuates an impression of towering heights looming overhead. None of the angles in this scenography make sense: the central archway, with its top invisible, appears to connect awkwardly to the cornice above the half-shell motif on the left. The right portion of the arch does not connect anywhere (fig. 106 shows a portion of this backdrop that is not seen in fig. 101). The forward pedestal of columns, located to the left of the horse statue, supports an equally chaotic arched structure. The rear area with its balustrade is neither an oval nor a semi-circle, and as a result the arches underneath are improperly angled and proportioned. 47
Fig.79 Fig.107 Fig.108 Fig.109 Fig.110 Fig.111 Fig.112 Fig.113 Fig.114	Bakst’s depiction of statuary in Scene V adds to the note of disquiet. Figures that appear orderly on the surface are not, upon closer inspection. The image of a rearing horse reappears, a distant reminder of the Bronze Horseman in Scene III. Previously a silhouette, Bakst made the statue more precise and brought it high and forward. Now Bakst depicts a man struggling to control the rearing horse, which can scarcely be held atop its pedestal and whose massive forequarters threaten to crush the body below. In Bakst’s rendering some of the potential for destructive action alluded to in the Pushkin and Blok poems, and Benois’s illustration (fig. 79), has escaped here. And the remaining statuary, benign and decorative in a baroque or rococo setting, has acquired other meanings. As Buckle points out, Bakst placed a Narcissus resembling a famous Nijinsky pose from Le Spectre de la Rose on the left side leg (Fig. 107). More than an innocuous reference to the great Ballets Russes dancer, Bakst’s Nijinsky actually becomes subsumed into the barley-sugar column and imprisoned, his waist cinched by one of the vines from the column behind him. In another classical grouping, a naked boy raises his eyes and arms to heaven in worship while the naked man behind him gazes downward, perhaps with more earthly desires. Bakst may have been commenting on Diaghilev’s fascination with his young male dancers (and a very young Boris Kochno who had just come into Diaghilev’s life at the time of The Sleeping Princess). The figures dotting the balustrade in the distance have in the final rendering sprouted wings and become cupids, witnesses not only to the fairy tale love of Aurora and Prince Charming, but also other darker (from the perspective of Bakst) forms of love. The costumes for Scene V include the new ones for the royalty, reflecting the passage of time, twelve couples (Mazurka Girls and Men) dancing the polonaise or polacca,[162] and twenty-two character roles for the divertissements based on various contes des fées. There were in total at least sixty-two bodies on stage. This does not count the unspecified numbers of “Lords and Ladies, Servants, Negro Lackeys, etc.” mentioned in the program. Bakst produced at least thirty-one original costume designs for this scene, though some had antecedents in baroque costume designs of Jean-Baptiste Martin, Jean Berain, Louis Boquet, and Claude Gillot. The Queen wore a white satin dress with a hoop skirt, trimmed in pearls and gold embroidery, with an overskirt of turquoise velvet edged in ermine (fig. 108). She wore a high white wig and plumes of feathers. The King’s outfit resembled armor and included a metal headdress and ostrich feathers (fig. 109). Aurora’s wedding dress (fig. 110) featured a pattern of sunrays and was based on an Apollo costume by Martin (1659-1735), made for the Sun King (fig. 111). Neither the main costume nor studio photographs are extant, although the Sotheby auction listing for the train gives an idea of the colors and trims: “Spessiva’s Wedding Train…Long rectangular train of oyster velvet with silver fringe, the lower end decorated with scrolls of embroidery in silver thread sprinkled with sprays of artificial orange blossom with leaves and berries. Lined with silver tissue.” The description of Prince Charming’s costume lists two parts (see fig. 112 for the first part); the second was evidently used for dancing the pas de deux: “White bolero with festoons of silver tissue outlined with heavy silver braid and with silver tassels. Kilt in the same white satin as the bolero jacket, with the same pattern of festoons and silver tassels but with an additional triangular motif forming a diminutive sporran.” [163] Certainly Aurora’s train would have been removed for the pas-de-deux; it is not known if the long underskirt was detachable. The Mazurka dancers wore costumes in a Polish style (fig. 113). The men’s jackets and pantaloons were in blue velvet trimmed in black swansdown. The women’s costumes were primarily in silver lamé and white velvet with gold braid and gold frogging, and also trimmed in black swansdown. A fish scale pattern in black was hand painted on the bodice and upper skirt while the lower paniers contained green leaves (possibly seaweed) and large shells (fig. 114). It is not known what may have prompted Bakst to propose a marine motif for the Mazurka Girls.[164] The blue and silver colors of the Mazurka couples would have complemented the turquoise sky of Bakst’s backdrop. 48
Fig.115 Fig.116 Fig.117 Fig.118 Fig.119 Fig.120 Fig.121 Fig.122 Fig.123	For the eight contes des fées divertissements Diaghilev made a number of musical changes that affected the costume requirements. The Pas de Quatre, originally variations for the Gold, Silver, Sapphire, and Diamond Fairies, was adjusted to accommodate dances by commedia dell’arte characters. Vera Nemtchinova as Colombine (fig. 115) danced to music of the Silver Fairy and Bronislava Nijinska as Pierrette danced to the Diamond Fairy’s music. The other two variations were eliminated. Pierrot and Harlequin presumably partnered the ladies. Next followed a Pas de Caractère, Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat. This number was unchanged. Diaghilev must have excised the number for Cendrillon and Prince Fortuné at the last minute, because the music score Diaghilev and Stravinsky worked on did not delete the number. Further, Bakst drew a design for Fortuné and an unidentified design that could be Cendrillon (fig. 116) and (fig. 117). Diaghilev retained the Blue Bird and the Enchanted Princess entrée (fig. 118) and (fig. 119). [165] The virtuoso dancing of Idzikowski and Lydia Lopokova made this a popular number with the audience, and the Daily Express noted that “M. Stanislas Idzikowski, as a Blue Bird, created quite a furore.” [166] Red Riding Hood and the Wolf were unchanged. A divertissement of Blue Beard, Ariana and Sister Anne (fig. 120) was danced to the Pas Berrichon (or Tom Thumb, his Brothers, and the Ogre) number. Next, Diaghilev interpolated a Shéhérazade dance (to The Nutcracker’s Danse Arabe) with Maria D’Albaicin, a Spanish dancer, in the title role (fig. 122). Her costume was completely different than the one Bakst designed in 1910 for Ida Rubinstein. Next, Diaghilev initiated a second interpolation from The Nutcracker, the Danse Chine, here called the Mandarin and the Porcelain Princesses. For these costumes Bakst drew upon eighteenth century designs by Martin for Les Indes Galantes (1735), a ballet with music by Rameau.[167] To music of the Coda of the Pas de Deux, Nijinska choreographed an acrobatic number titled Innocent Ivan and his Brothers, another popular number with audiences (fig. 123). The Sotheby catalogue costume description reads as follows: “Russian peasant tunic of silver satin, with broad white repp border which continues up the sides of the tunic suggests the shape of a tabard and is decorated with a chain pattern in gold embroidery, the collar and cuffs being similar to the border. The whole tunic being appliqué with a large Gothic design of stylized roses and inter-weaving branches in scarlet and royal-blue silk, gold braid and gold thread embroidery. Baggy knee-length blue satin pantaloons. Calf-length scarlet leather boots.” [168] The scene concluded with the Entrée of Aurora and Prince Charming and the Finale. 49
	Conclusion Bakst’s décor and mise-en-scène for The Sleeping Princess were conceived with great care and inspiration. As prefigured in his program essay, his décor is encased in nostalgia for his early years in Russia; it conveys his youthful delight in re-discovering the music of Chaikovsky and the choreography of Petipa, and re-visioning the spectacle of the imperial ballet. But beyond a tribute to fond remembrance, Bakst’s approach to The Sleeping Princess décor was shaped by the Russian Symbolist debates during the Silver Age and his experiences with Diaghilev and the World of Art group. Bakst’s presence in this milieu and his own participation in the Apollonian/Dionysian discussions informed his later interpretation of the Chaikovsky/Petipa ballet. His décor illustrated a mature understanding of the kinetic and aural realms of the ballet, and how décor could visually bind together such a theatrical work of art. As Levinson points out, it is Bakst’s “feeling for synthesis… his impeccable instinct for harmony, which blends the innumerable elements of the performance [of The Sleeping Princess] into one single, coherent whole.” [169] This goal of artistic fusion, which grew out of the World of Art experiments, was one of the chief contributions of the Ballets Russes to twentieth century dance history. 50
	Bakst’s scenic view of The Sleeping Princess evolved from earlier efforts associated with the Rothschild panels and Pavlova’s Sleeping Beauty, though all but six of the over eighty costume designs he produced for The Sleeping Princess were new. Bakst retained the architectural designs from 1916 for the first and last backdrops, which were derived from baroque stage models. However, he used perspective as a conscious illusion, a theatrical technique to recreate the grandeur that had been very real in 1890. He also altered the scenography in ways that clarified his essentially Symbolist depiction of the ballet. For The Sleeping Princess Bakst sharpened the contrast between the linear scenery used for the public rituals of the Christening and the wedding and the inner scenes of muted color and suppressed line which embody the romantic yearning of Prince Charming and the vision of Aurora. Reinforcing the dichotomy between outer and inner worlds while articulating a rhythmic flow, Bakst expanded the vistas in Scene I, gradually circumscribed them in the inner scenes, and then opened up the sky in Scene V. His choice of the scena per angolo for Scene I, and the way it was silhouetted against the costumes of the court, was a brilliant visual reinforcement of the tonal structure of Chaikovsky’s music and the choreography’s formal relationship to it. In addition to Bakst’s manipulation of line and color, he introduced symbols into his décor, echoes of his days in St. Petersburg that evoked poetic and visual images of the Bronze Horseman and the Eternal Feminine, and the imperial eagle. The sexual imagery of the sleeping Aurora in her bed shows Bakst’s eroticization of ideal beauty, much as had been expressed by Blok in his Verses to the Beautiful Lady, and other Symbolists. The intended eagle figure was to be a striking visualization of themes integral to The Sleeping Princess: nobility, perpetuation of the royal line, and perhaps the more allegorical theme of the protective influence of an imagined world – the fairy world – on the terrestrial one. In its place Bakst substituted a different image from the Russian past, that of Pushkin’s Tale of the Dead Princess, itself a referent for some of Blok’s Beautiful Lady poetry. The return to balance that occurs in the libretto and score in Scene V is subtly undermined by Bakst’s final set with its asymmetrical perspective and its vaguely disturbing statuary. Through these slight distortions, Bakst seems to be adding an element of Symbolism referred to by Georgy Chulkov: For [the symbolist-idealist] beauty is only a cold reflection of a dream, a petrified dream-vision: and it’s no accident that Baudelaire puts exactly these words in the mouth of beauty: Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre… The evolution of idealistic Symbolism from Baudelaire to Maeterlinck was defined, in my view, by the pathos of illusionism: the poets made it their task to expose the illusiveness of empirical visibility. [170] While Bakst’s décor remains true in spirit to the “empirical visibility” of the original Sleeping Beauty with its aura of splendor, his accretions are themselves “reflections of a dream,” occasionally but not always cold. Bakst’s décor, with its many layers of meaning, complements the original Sleeping Beauty by “exposing its illusiveness,” in the words of Chulkov. What makes Bakst’s décor for The Sleeping Princess so apt is that his Symbolist visualization of the ballet embodies the atmosphere surrounding the ballet at the fin-de-siècle, while at the same time it remains true to the artistic values of the Chaikovsky/Petipa ballet. The ballet held deep meaning for Russian expatriates in the West, but that meaning was largely lost on the London audience. Levinson elevates The Sleeping Beauty to the status of “the force of a living tradition” in comments that contain a caustic assessment of post-Revolutionary Russia: During the thirty years that followed that triumphal evening [the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty in 1890], the ballet has again and again changed its protagonists….A few years ago, when Vsevolojskoi’s charming old costumes were falling to pieces, they were replaced by scenes and costumes designed by Korovine, of the Imperial Academy, a Muscovite painter, who crushed beneath the weight of cumbersome learning, crude colours and useless bric-à-brac, all that remained of the fragile and elegant dream conceived in the unique atmosphere of Saint-Petersburg, “that most” (in the words of Dostoievsky) “fantastic city in the world.” Then came the great revolutionary tempest, which swept away centuries of civilisation. Yet such is the force of a living tradition, that the debris of the illustrious Imperial Ballet survived, and one saw young dancers like Gerdt, Spessiva and Maklezova, dancing the part of Aurora before a turbulent audience thronged with Red Guards, and seeking protection against an icy temperature which froze the water in their dressing-room basins, by wearing thick knitted jackets with long sleeves beneath their filmy costumes of red gauze. All this heroic loyalty to the art of dancing, to its honour and to the ideal aspirations of the great “Petitpa style,” represents so much ineffectual beauty in the midst of hideous, implacable reality. The Sleeping Princess sleeps in a dying land – a sleep from which there can be no awakening. It was at this moment, when the destiny of the Russian ballet had seemingly run its course, that Diaghilev appeared, and called upon Bakst to bring Aurora back to life. [171] The dancers and outer trappings change, but the ballet remains a “fragile and elegant dream.” As the régisseur Grigoriev recounts, Diaghilev echoed Levinson’s sentiments: “During the last days of The Sleeping Princess, indeed, Diaghilev invited some of his friends to the theatre. ‘Watch this performance,’ he said to them with a bitter smile. ‘It will not be repeated many times more; and you will never again see such a perfect ensemble, or such choreography, or such a décor. This is the last relic of the great days of St. Petersburg.’ ” [172] Bakst, too, looked back nostalgically on imperial Russia as evidenced by his program note. But there was no denying that in 1921, after the Great War and the Russian Revolution, glittering aristocracy was a memory as ephemeral as a night at the Mariinsky or the Alhambra. 51

. 
 

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ILLUSTRATIONS

List of Figures, Bakst Chapter

Fig. 1 Bakst Self-Portrait, 1906. Pruzhan.

Fig. 2 Autograph letter from Bakst to Huntley Carter (page 1). [1911?] National Art Library (Great Britain), Manuscript, MSL/1933/2235.

Fig. 3 Cléopâtre décor, 1909. Spencer, 55.

Fig. 4 Schéhérazade décor, 1910. Schouvaloff, 94-95.

Fig. 5 Preliminary sketch, Rothschild panel fingerprick. Souhami, 46.

Fig. 6 Nude study for Rothschild panel. On Stage: The Art of Léon Bakst, 11 [English side of book].

Fig. 7 Nude study for Rothschild panel. On Stage: The Art of Léon Bakst, 12 [English side].

Fig. 8 Working sketch of Adelheid de Rothschild. Souhami, 39.

Fig. 9 Working sketch of Eugene Pinto. Souhami, 43.

Fig. 10 Rothschild panel, Baptism. Souhami, 61.

Fig. 11 Paul Berain, Furie Erinnis. Jérôme la Gorce, Berain: Dessinateur du Roi Soleil. Paris: Herscher, 1986, 74.

Fig. 12 Rothschild panel, Curse. Souhami, 57.

Fig. 13 Rothschild panel, Princess at the Spinning Wheel. Souhami, 65.

Fig. 14 Photo of Bakst’s raven. Bowlt, “Theater of Reason,” 19.

Fig. 15 Rothschild panel, Kiss. Souhami, 81.

Fig. 16 Anna Pavlova in Bakst’s costume for The Swan. Schouvaloff, 56.

Fig. 17 Studio photo of Pavlova rehearsal. Money, 235.

Fig. 18 Programme, “The Big Show.” R. H. Burnside Papers, NYPL. [Waiting for NYPL copies]

Fig. 19 Bakst designs, Programme, “The Big Show.” R. H. Burnside Papers, NYPL.

Fig. 20 Baptism, Pavlova’s Sleeping Beauty. Nesta MacDonald, 272 top.

Fig. 21 Garland Dance, Pavlova’s Sleeping Beauty. MacDonald, 272 bottom.

Fig. 22 Stage design for Prologue and Act 1, 1916. Evergreen House, Fig. 18.

Fig. 23 Pencil sketch for Act 3, 1916. On Stage: The Art of Léon Bakst, 10 [Hebrew side].

Fig. 24 Pencil sketch for stage design, Act 3, 1916. Schouvaloff, 180.

Fig. 25 Stage design for Forest, 1916. Evergreen House, Figure 14.

Fig. 26 Stage design for Sleeping Beauty, 1916. On Stage: The Art of Léon Bakst, 22 [English side].

Fig. 27 Act I gold costume for Pavlova, 1916. Money, 240.

Fig. 28 Costume design for Pavlova as Vision of Aurora, 1916. Souhami, 24.

Fig. 29 Studio photo of Bakst’s costume for Pavlova, Aurora’s Wedding, 1916. Money, 238.

Fig. 30 Mock-up with hand-written notes. Kochno, 169.

Fig. 31 Title page of Sleeping Princess programme.

Fig. 32 Costume of guard, cover of Sleeping Princess programme.

Fig. 33 Stage design for Scene I, 1921. Levinson, Designs for Sleeping Princess, Plate 7.

Fig. 34 Partial sketch for Scene I, 1921. NYPL.

Fig. 35 Studio photo from Scene I, 1921. MacDonald, 280.

Fig. 36 Studio photo from Scene I, 1921. Schouvaloff, 205.

Fig. 37 Costume for Princess Royal, Scene I, 1921. Sotheby, 142.

Fig. 38 Studio photo of Prologue, Mariinsky production, 1890. Scholl.

Fig. 39 Studio photo of Kirov Sleeping Beauty, 1999. Scholl, 137.

Fig. 40 Pietro Gonzaga’s stage design “Temple with a Columned Rotunda with Statues of Philosophers.” State Hermitage Museum Digital Collection.

Fig. 41 Giuseppe Valeriani stage design for Tsefal i Prokris (1755). State Hermitage Museum Digital Collection.

Fig. 42 Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena engraving, Atrio, c. 1703. Ricci, plate 15.

Fig. 43 Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena engraving, Tempio di Apollo. Ricci plate 13.

Fig. 44 Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena diagram for scena per angolo, Varie Opere di Prospettiva, 1703-08.

Fig. 45 Giuseppe Galli Bibiena engraving, 1740. Mayor, Plate 53.

Fig. 46 Costume design for the Queen, Scenes I and II, 1921. Schouvaloff, 210-11.

Fig. 47 Studio photo of King and Queen, Scene I, 1921. MacDonald, 277.

Fig. 48 Costume for the Queen, Scenes I and II, 1921. Sotheby, 126.

Fig. 49 Costume design for the Queen, 1916. Schouvaloff, 181.

Fig. 50 Costume for Cantalabutte, Scene I, 1921. Sotheby, 120.

Fig. 51 Costume for Carabosse, 1921. Sotheby, 134.

Fig. 52 Costume design for Fairy Cherry Blossom. Sleeping Princess programme.

Fig. 53 Costume design for Fairy Carnation. Levinson, Plate 21.

Fig. 54 Costume design for Fairy Mountain Ash. Levinson, Plate 18.

Fig. 55 Costume design for Fairy Canary. Mayer, Pl. 425a.

Fig. 56 Studio photo, Lydia Lopokova as Fairy Lilac, 1921. Beaumont Personal Record, after 208.

Fig. 57 Studio photo, Bronislava Nijinska as Fairy Hummingbird. Library of Congress.

Fig. 58 Studio photo, 6 Fairies. L-R: Fairies Hummingbird, Canary, Lilac, Pine Woods, Carnation, Mountain Ash. Kochno, 174.

Fig. 59 Costume design for Page of Fairy Pine Tree. Sleeping Princess programme.

Fig 60 Studio photo of Lopokova as Fairy Lilac, with train. Kochno, 175.

Fig. 61 Schwabe Illustration of Scene I. Beaumont, The Sleeping Princess, Part One, 3.

Fig. 62 Stage design for the Royal Garden. Levinson, Plate 13.

Fig. 63 Schwabe Illustration of Scene II. Beaumont, The Sleeping Princess, Part One, 17.

Fig. 64 Schwabe Illustration of Lilac and leafy curtain. Beaumont, The Sleeping Princess, Part One, 20.

Fig. 65 Studio photo, Mariinsky Sleeping Beauty, 1890, The Spell. Scholl, 16.

Fig. 66 Alexandre Benois, Set design for Pavillon d’Armide, 1909. Lynn Garafola, Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds. The Ballets Russes and its World.

Fig. 67 Costume design for the King in the Garden, 1921. Levinson, Plate 50.

Fig. 68 Costume design for the Princess Aurora, Scene II, 1921. Levinson, Plate 14.

Fig. 69 Studio photos of Olga Spessiva and Vera Trefilova as Aurora, Scene II, 1921. MacDonald, 275.

Fig. 70 Costumes for Italian, Spanish, and English Princes. Sotheby, 122.

Fig. 71 Costume design for the Indian Prince. Levinson, Plate 45.

Fig. 72 Costumes for Village Youth and Maiden. Sotheby, 152.

Fig. 73 Costume design for Elphes. Sotheby, Décor and Costume Designs, 16.

Fig. 74 Costume design for Dames de la Court, Acte I (Scene II), 1921. Mayer, Plate 403a.

Fig. 75 Stage design for the Vision, 1916. Evergreen House, Figure 22.

Fig. 76 Pencil drawing, Vision, 1921. Kochno, 172.

Fig. 77 Final design, Vision, 1921. Sleeping Princess programme.

Fig. 78 Photo of Bronze Horseman. www.saint-petersburg.com.

Fig. 79 Benois illustration of Bronze Horseman. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronze_Horseman_(poem)

Fig. 80 Costumes for the Countess and Prince, Scene III, 1921. Sotheby, 158.

Fig. 81 Costume design for Galisson, Scene III, 1921. Levinson, Plate 40.

Fig. 82 Costumes for Duke and Duchess, Scene III, 1921. Sotheby, 156.

Fig. 83 Costumes for Marquis and Marchioness, Scene III, 1921. Sotheby, 160.

Fig. 84 Costume design for a Baroness, Scene III, 1916. Evergreen House, Figure 13.

Fig. 85 Costume design for a Hunter, Scene III, 1921. Mayer, Plate 399.

Fig. 86 Costume for a Beater, Scene III, 1921. Sotheby, 148.

Fig. 87 Studio photos, Princess Aurora and Prince Charming. MacDonald, 275.

Fig. 88 Costume design for Young Girls, and “les jeunes filles fantastiques” [Nymphs, Act III?]. Mayer, Plate 431a and 431b.

Fig. 89 Schwabe illustration of the Vision, 1921. Beaumont, Part Two, 5.

Fig. 90 Bakst design for Scene IV, 1921. Schouvaloff, 207.

Fig. 91 Studio photo published in The Sketch, November 16, 1921. London Theatre Museum.

Fig. 92 Bakst pencil sketch on Savoy Hotel stationery. Schouvaloff, 207.

Fig. 93 Charles de Wailly’s design for the palace of Gluck’s Armide (1778). Caisse nationale de monuments historiques et des sites, Charles de Wailly: peintre architecte dans l’Europe des lumières.

Fig. 94 Photograph from 1890 Sleeping Beauty, the Awakening. Scholl, 18.

Fig. 95 Stage design for Thamar, 1912. The Decorative Art of Léon Bakst, Plate 45.

Fig. 96 Russian Imperial Eagle. riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/local/sbml18.htm

Fig. 97 Title page of Bibiena engravings dedicated to Charles VI, Holy Roman Empire (etching by Martin Bernigerotti of Charles VI). Architecture e prospettive dedicate all Maesta di Carlo Sesto, Imperador, de Romani, 1740; reprinted in Mary Alice Beaumont, Eighteenth-Century Scenic and Architectural Design: Drawings by the Galli Bibiena Family.

Fig. 98 Bakst’s letterhead design for Mir isskustva, 1898. Spencer, 224

Fig. 99 Photograph of Aurora on her tomb, Scene IV, 1921. London Theatre Museum; Schwabe illustration of the Awakening, 1921. Beaumont, Part Two, 9.

Fig. 100 Stage design for the Betrothal, 1921. Levinson, Plate 36.

Fig. 101 Photograph of backdrop for Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 178.

Fig. 102 Photograph of side legs and pelmet for Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 181.

Fig. 103 Studio photograph of Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 168.

Fig. 104 Francesco Bibiena: Atrium of “Royal Palace of the Sun” or “The Palace of Diana.” (n.d.). Mary Alice Beaumont, Eighteenth-Century Scenic and Architectural Design: Drawings by the Galli Bibiena Family.

Fig. 105 Design for The Wedding, Mariinsky Sleeping Beauty, 1890. Garafola, Van Norman Baer, Ballets Russes and Its World.

Fig. 106 Photograph of backdrop for Scene V. Sotheby, 180.

Fig. 107 Photograph of Vasclav Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose. Svietlov, Ballet Contemporain, after 92.

Fig. 108 Costume of the Queen and Pages, Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 134.

Fig. 109 Costume design for the King, Scene V, 1921. Levinson, Plate 35.

Fig. 110 Costume design for Princess Aurora wedding dress, Scene V, 1921. Fitzwilliam Museum.

Fig. 111 Jean Baptiste Martin, Costume for Apollo. Beaumont, Five Centuries, 57.

Fig. 112 Costume for Prince Charming, Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 176.

Fig. 113 Costumes for Mazurka Men and Girls, Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 136.

Fig. 114 Costume design for Mazurka Girl, Scene V, 1921. Levinson, Plate 33.

Fig. 115 Costume design for Columbine, Scene V, 1921. Levinson, Plate 11.

Fig. 116 Costume design for Prince Fortune, Scene V, 1921. Private collection.

Fig. 117 Costume design [Cendrillon?], Scene V, 1921. Private collection.

Fig. 118 Costume design for Blue Bird, Scene V, 1921. Schouvaloff, 208.

Fig. 119 Costume design for the Enchanted Princess, Scene V, 1921. Schouvaloff, 208.

Fig. 120 Costumes for Blue Beard, Ariana and Sister Anne, Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 174.

Fig. 121 Claude Gillot costume design for a Naiad in the ballet Les Quatre Eléments, engraving 1721. Mayer, Plate 426b.

Fig. 121 Studio photograph of Maria Dalbaicin in Schéhérazade divertissement, Scene V, 1921. Kochno, 174.

Fig. 123 Costumes for Ivan and his Brothers, Scene V, 1921. Sotheby, 172.

REW

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[1] Studies and biographies devoted to Bakst, as opposed to those concerning Mir iskusstva, the Ballets Russes, or Diaghilev, include: André Levinson, preface to The Designs of Leon Bakst for The Sleeping Princess (1922; repr. New York, Benjamin Blom, 1971); Levinson, Bakst: The Story of the Artist’s Life (London: Bayard Press, 1923); Henning Rischbieter, ed., Léon Bakst: Painting and Stage Design; Art and the Stage in the Twentieth Century (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968); Charles Spencer, Leon Bakst (New York: Rizzoli, 1973); Charles S. Mayer, The Theatrical Designs of Léon Bakst (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1983), (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1977); Irina Pruzhan, Léon Bakst: Set and Costume Designs; Book Illustrations; Paintings and Graphic Works, trans. Arthur Shkarovski-Raffé (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1988); and Alexander Schouvaloff, Léon Bakst: The Theatre Art (London: Sotheby’s Publications, 1991).

[2] A qualification is necessary here. The full-length Sleeping Beauty (La bella dormente) was given in 1896 at La Scala with Carlotta Brianza reprising her role as Aurora from the 1890 premiere of the Petipa/Chaikovsky ballet. According to George Jackson and Peter Gogel, the ballet was danced “in its entirety” and preceded on the bill by an entire performance of Bizet’s Pearlfishers, which must have made for a very long evening. The ballet was “[un] buonissimo esito e ripetuto per ventiquattro sere” [“a great success and repeated for twenty-four evenings,”] according to Carlo Gatti, Il Teatro alla Scala: Nella storia e nell’arte (1778-1953) (Milano: Ricordi, 1964), 188. In that year La Scala also staged Coppélia. There were slight changes to The Sleeping Beauty scenario; for example, Jackson and Gogel recount that “Aurora’s wedding, the final scene, takes place not in her father’s palace but in that of the Lilac Fairy in the Land of Legend.” New sets were made, though uncredited, and costumes attributed to Zamperoni. All of the cast names were Italian. (Brianza was trained in Italy [reportedly with Carlo Blasis] and had danced in St. Petersburg from 1889-1891. She returned to the Teatro alla Scalla as Prima ballerina from 1895-1900.) “The Italian ‘Beauty’ of 1896: First Full Production in the West,” Ballet Review, 2, no. 6 (1969): 24-27. Gogel consulted La Scala’s 1896 list as well as Milanese newspapers of the time in researching the article.

Regarding another event of Russian ballet performance in the West, Lynn Garafola reports incorrectly that the “full-length Swan Lake [was] given at the [London] Hippodrome in 1910 by a company of Imperial dancers led by Olga Preobrajenska.” Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1998), 212. Swan Lake is a four-act ballet. The Hippodrome production was a two-act truncated version lasting an hour, as reported in the Times (London), May 17, 1910, 11. For a reproduction of the program, see Nesta MacDonald, Diaghilev Observed (New York, London: Dance Horizons, 1975), 22.

[3] The French impresario Gabriel Astruc, with whom Diaghilev was planning a Paris season of opera and ballet, reported a conversation that took place in June of 1908. “You, in France, do not honor dancing any longer, and the art is incomplete as you show it today…. But Paris will never come to see whole evenings of dancing.” “Le premier feu d’artifice,” La Revue Musicale, December 1930, 43-45. Diaghilev echoed the view of Marius Petipa (1818-1910). In an 1896 interview on the Imperial Ballet, the choreographer noted “In Paris they’ve already stopped giving grand ballets and content themselves only with small ones. There the ballet is dying, absolutely dying. And there’s no one to support it.” Peterburgskaya gazeta, December 2, 1896. Quoted in translation in Tim Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 20.

[4] Diaghilev had presented a series of four concerts in Paris in 1907, which included Russian symphonic and operatic music; Chaliapine and Litvinne in Act I of Borodin’s Prince Igor made a great impression, which encouraged him to plan subsequent seasons featuring Russian talent. Richard Buckle wrote that “even…four months before the Paris opening [in 1909], [Diaghilev] was chiefly interested in the operas he was going to present, namely Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila, Borodin’s Prince Igor, Mussorgsky’s Boris and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Maid of Pskov; and he thought of the ballets less as integrated works of art than as the means of showing off wonderful Russian dancers.” Diaghilev, rev. ed. (London: Weidenfeld, 1993), 129. The ballets under consideration were Cléopâtre, with a pastiche score, Les Sylphides, with music by Chopin that did not orchestrate well, and Le Pavillon d’Armide with a score by Tcherepnine.

[5] Richard Capell, Daily Mail, November 3, 1921.

[6] Martin Birnbaum, Léon Bakst (New York: Berlin Photographic Co., 1913), 6. Birnbaum was an art dealer, a partner in an art firm, and manager of the Berlin Photographic Co. He organized several exhibitions in the U.S. of Bakst’s art during the 1910s.

[7] In the interest of clarity I adhere to the terminology as printed in the Alhambra Theatre program for Scenes I-V of The Sleeping Princess. Thus: Scene I – The Christening; Scene II – The Spell; Scene III – The Vision; Scene IV – The Awakening; Scene V – The Wedding. Other writers use “Act” instead of “Scene.” Even Bakst labeled some of his costume designs “Acte 1,” “5 Acte – Galisson,” etc. Some writers note that, soon into the performance run, Scene III was bifurcated to incorporate the very short Awakening scene; for these writers the final scene is IV. Adding to the confusion is the terminology in the published 1890 libretto which is structured as a prologue and three acts: Prologue (Scene 1), The Christening of Princess Aurora; Act I (Scene 2), Princess Aurora’s Four Suitors; Act II (Scene 3), Prince Désiré’s Hunt; Act II (Scene 4), Sleeping Beauty’s Castle; and Act III (Scene 5), The Wedding of Aurora and the Prince, The Esplanade of Florestan’s Castle. See Roland John Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), Appendix A, 327-33. For Petipa’s instructions to Chaikovsky, see Wiley, Appendix D, 354-9. Petipa’s Programme, La Belle au bois-dormant; Ballet fantastique en cinq tableaux, dated July 10, 1889 (in French), is structured as Prologue and three acts, but in addition specifies five tableaux. Wiley, Appendix D, 359-70. Both the orchestral score and piano reduction are structured as Introduction, Prologue, Acte I, Acte II, Acte III (titles generally given in French and Russian), without descriptors. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Sleeping Beauty; Dornröschen; La Belle au Bois Dormant; Ballet, Op. 66 (London: Ernst Eulenburg Ltd, 1974). The piano reduction used by Diaghilev and Stravinsky is divided into Prologue and Acte I, Acte II, and Acte III, but in addition contains the printed designation “1er Tableau” at the beginning of Acte II (No. 10), and “2d Tableau” above No. 19, the Entr’Acte Symphonique. Paul Sacher Stiftung, MF 483. The piano reduction, arranged by A. Ziloti and simplified by E. Langer, was published in Paris by Mackar et Noël, Editeurs Commissionnaires, but is undated.

[8] Autograph letter from Léon Bakst to Huntley Carter [1911?] National Art Library (Great Britain), Manuscript, MSL/1933/2235. Unless noted, all translations are my own. French orthography corrected.

[9] For example, Bakst collaborated with Michel Fokine on the libretto of Carnaval (1910); he participated in Firebird (1910) and contributed some costume designs; Bakst, Alexandre Benois, and Fokine developed the libretto of Schéhérazade (1910), from Arabian Nights; Bakst is credited with the libretti of Narcisse (1911) and Thamar (1912), the latter based on a poem by Lermontov.

[10] V. A. Telyakovsky, Vospominaniya [Reminiscences], (Moscow: [n.p.], 1965), 161-2. Quoted in translation in Scholl, Petipa, 9. Director Vsevolozhsky designed many of the costumes for the original Chaikovsky/Petipa Sleeping Beauty. Per tradition, several stage designers created the sets.

[11] Utro Rosii [Russian Morning], August 24, 1910. Quoted in translation in Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 97.

[12] Fairy tales foretell endings in beginnings. In Sleeping Beauty, as in Perrault’s La Belle au Bois Dormant, there is no dramatic tension regarding the possible death of the princess or the fate of Florestan’s kingdom. Rather, the action concerns the dénouement, the unwinding of knots.

[13] W. A. Propert, The Russian Ballet, 1921-1929 (London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, 1931), 11-12.

[14] Many of these artists in turn became involved in the Ballets Russes with Diaghilev. For accounts of the Nevsky Pickwickians and the World of Art group, including early activities of Bakst, see Alexandre Benois, Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet, trans. Mary Britnieva, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977); John E. Bowlt, The Silver Age: Russian Art of the Early Twentieth Century and the “World of Art” Group (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1979); Buckle, Diaghilev; Janet Elspeth Kennedy, The“Mir iskusstva” Group and Russian Art 1898-1912 (New York and London: Garland, 1977); and Serge Lifar, Diaghilev (London: Putnam, 1945).

On Russian Symbolism, see Ronald E. Peterson, A History of Russian Symbolism (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1993); Ronald E. Peterson, ed. and trans., The Russian Symbolists: An Anthology of Critical and Theoretical Writings (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1986); and Avril Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Joan Ross Acocella, “The Reception of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes by Artists and Intellectuals in Paris and London, 1909-1914,” doctoral thesis, Rutgers University, 1984.

[15] Quoted in translation in Acocella, “Reception,” 144.

[16] Diaghilev, quoted in translation in “Diaghilev’s ‘Complicated Questions,’” edited and with an introduction by Joan Acocella, 84-5, 358n. In The Ballets Russes and Its World, Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999). Italics in original. See also Kennedy, “Mir iskusstva” Group, 80.

[17] For example, Benois wrote of Schéhérazade (1910), “When the curtain rises over the grandiose green alcove, one seems at once to enter into the world of strange and peculiar sensations....The emerald green of the covers, curtains, and throne, the blue night in the harem garden streaming in through the ornamented windows, the piles of embroidered cushions – all absolutely enchanting, and in the midst half-naked dancers entertaining the Sultan with strictly symmetrical movements of their flexible, graceful bodies. Spicy, sensuous aromas seem to be wafted from the stage, but the soul is filled with foreboding….It is difficult to imagine an exposition of drama more sympathetic, more to the point than Bakst’s décor.” Benois, Reminiscences, 315.

The Symbolist writer Andrei Bely (Boris Bugaev, 1880-1934) wrote four prose Symphonies between 1902-08. In these experimental works he explored the language as music. In 1902 Bely contributed an article to Mir iskusstva titled “The Forms of Art,” which developed a theory of the connection between art and music.

[18] Arlene Croce noted the allegorical significance of Sleeping Beauty: “Aurora is the reigning symbol: the world’s first ballerina, Dance itself, born on a May morning in France, put to sleep by the deadly ministrations of the Paris Opéra, awakening to a Russian spring.” “The Dreamer of the Dream,” Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), 552. Originally written February 24, 1986.

[19] Bakst’s residency permit was rescinded and he was forced to leave the city on short notice despite attempted intervention from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and others. Upon his arrival in Paris in November 1912, The New York Times published an interview in which Bakst said, “I am still dazed by my experiences. It is almost impossible for me to realize my present situation, for despite reports to the contrary I am simply debarred from re-entering St. Petersburg. My passport bears the stamp of the Russian police ordering me to leave the city in twenty-four hours, and even if I were able to reach the capital without mishap no hotel would dream of receiving me under its roof, and any one of my friends who was found harboring me would be convicted of a penal offense….Diagileff, with whom I am associated in the Russian ballet productions and who went to see the St. Petersburg Chief of Police on my behalf, was told that officially I was down on the police books only as a Jew, and that no matter what I might be as an artist, to him I was only a subject of the Czar who, according to existing laws, had no right to reside in St. Petersburg. Now for the real reason why I have become an undesirable citizen in the eyes of the Russian police. In 1903 I became an orthodox Christian in order to marry a lady who was a member of the Greek Church. Without nominally changing my creed it would have been impossible to do this, as the law at that time prohibited any alliance between orthodox Christians and members of any other denomination. Two years later, however, the law allowing freedom of conscience to Russian citizens was promulgated, and I decided to end the religious masquerade I had been forced to play, and therefore became a Jew once more.” The New York Times, November 24, 1912. Bakst’s wife was the widow Madame Liubov Gritzenko, daughter of prominent businessman Pavel Tretiakov (and founder of the art gallery that bears his name). They were separated or divorced in 1905 (the record is unclear) but nonetheless remained close thereafter. Their son, André, was born in 1907. Bakst corresponded with Liubov even as he lived in Paris and she in St. Petersburg.

Bakst’s original family name was Rozenberg. He changed it to Bakst sometime in his teens and biographers disagree on the name’s provenance. Anti-Semitism impeded Bakst’s entry into the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, and hastened his expulsion after a controversial interpretation of “The Madonna Weeping Over Christ” resulted in a large red “X” drawn across the canvas by the judges. Pruzhan reports that in January 1914 Bakst was elected into the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, which automatically allowed his residence in the capital. It is not clear how long he stayed; he seems to have left by early 1915 and spent most of that year in Switzerland with his sister, recuperating from depression. See Pruzhan, Bakst, 224 and Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 21-22.

[20] V. V. Rozanov, letter of August 29, 1918 to E. Gollerbach, his biographer in V.V. Rozanov, Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo, (1922, repr. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1976) and quoted in translation in Pyman, Russian Symbolism, 133. Hewing his own path, Rozanov associated loosely with the various Russian Symbolist circles. Bakst painted his portrait in 1901 as seen in Spencer, Bakst, 25.

[21] Raymond Mortimer described The Sleeping Princess as “a ballet all clothes and three hours long, a ballet that delighted those who hated the Sacre.” “London Letter, February 1922,” Dial, March 1922, 296.

[22] “Tchaikovsky at the Russian Ballet,” Souvenir Program (unpaginated), The Sleeping Princess, 1921, V&A Theatre Collection, London. Bakst exaggerated his awkward youthfulness, though perhaps not his penury. In 1890 Bakst was twenty-four years old and had been expelled from the Academy five years previously.

[23] For descriptions of the Coronation Gala and press reaction, see MacDonald, 34-39; also Buckle, Diaghilev, 204-08.

[24] “Notes on Décor: The Sleeping Princess,” The Dancing Times (London), December 1921, 283.

[25] Petipa adapted the libretto from Perrault’s fairy tale, with various parts of the tale cut to conform to the basic structure of the nineteenth century Russian ballet as developed by Petipa. Others in the Petipa “grand ballet” prototype include Daughter of the Pharoah (1862), Le Corsaire (1863), Don Quixote (1869), and La Bayadère (1877). All (including The Sleeping Beauty) were indebted to the French romantic ballet Giselle (1841) with its mad scene followed by a ballet blanc. See Lynn Garafola, “Russian Ballet in the Age of Petipa,” Marion Kant, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ballet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 151-163; and Scholl, Petipa, 4-12.

For an analysis of Chaikovsky’s 1890 opera Pikovaya dama (Queen of Spades) as a Symbolist opera, see Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2002). The opera’s libretto is based on the eponymous novella by Pushkin.

[26] Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner and Tannhäuser in Paris (1861), quoted in translation in Daniel Albright, ed. Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 229. Italics in original. The Baudelairean tone of Bakst’s essay in the The Sleeping Princess program has not been remarked upon in the literature.

[27] The music of Wagner, as well as that of Chaikovsky, enthralled the World of Art group. Bakst, Diaghilev, and Benois were exposed to Wagner’s operas during their travels in Western Europe in the 1890s. In 1892, at age twenty, Diaghilev described the overture of Die Meistersinger to his stepmother: “The sound grew and transformed itself into a storm. There were more and more sounds, whirlwinds of sound, more, and more, and more, heavenly thunderclaps, floods, a whole forest of sounds. Blackness! And then suddenly paradise, with the Muse of Melody plucking her lyre. It has everything – pettiness, intrigue, grief, wrath, love, jealousy, endearments, and groans. All of this congeals and in the end comes together to engender life, the same life that flows through each of us. But true beauty triumphs over all.” Diaghilev to Elena Valerianovna, July 14, 1892, quoted in translation in Israel Nesteev, “Diaghilev’s Musical Education,” in Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds., The Ballets Russes and Its World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 34. Tannhäuser and Lohengrin were the only Wagner operas performed in Russia until Tristan und Isolde was given its first Russian performance in 1898. Diaghilev wrote articles about Wagner that year in Mir iskusstva. See Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner in Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

By the time of The Sleeping Princess, Bakst espoused a different view in his program essay: “I have never feared to state my own personal opinion, even when it went against the tide, and I confess, without subterfuge, that, beside Tchaikovsky’s melody, the ruminated thematism of Wagner seems to me cerebral and – tedious (pompier).” Bakst, “Tchaikovsky at the Russian Ballet.” Here Bakst echoes Stravinsky’s letter, printed in the newspapers of Paris and London before the premiere of The Sleeping Princess, and included in the souvenir program. Stravinsky wrote, “Chaikovsky possessed the power of melody, centre of gravity in every symphony, opera or ballet composed by him….And that is something which is not German.…The convincing example of Chaikovsky’s great creative power is beyond all doubt the ballet of The Sleeping Beauty. This cultured man, with his knowledge of folksong and of old French music, had no need to engage in archaeological research in order to present the age of Louis XIV; he recreated the character of the period by his musical language, preferring involuntary but living anachronisms to conscious and laboured pasticcio: a virtue that appertains only to great creative minds.” The Sleeping Princess program; and “The Genius of Tchaikovsky; Stravinsky’s Views; ‘The Sleeping Beauty.’ ” The Times (London), October 18, 1921, 8. The article began, “In view of the fact that Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, is to be produced shortly by the Russian Ballet, considerable interest attaches to the following letter addressed to M. Diaghilev by M. Stravinsky. It has been translated and forwarded to us by Mr. Edwin Evans.”

[28] Bakst, “Tchaikovsky at the Russian Ballet.”

[29] “First wave” Symbolists included Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Valeri Briusov, Konstantin Balmont, and Fyodor Sologub. The “second wave” was represented by Aleksandr Blok, Andrey Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Innokenty Annensky. The Symbolist movement spanned the period from 1892-1917; historians usually date the period known as the Silver Age from 1898 (the year Mir iskusstva and the Moscow Art Theater were established) until 1917. Peterson, History, 8-9, 211.

[30] “Sharl’ Bodler” (Charles Baudelaire) in Vesy, No. 6 (1909), 71-80, quoted in translation in Adrian Wanner, Baudelaire in Russia (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1996), 169. Wanner discusses the reception history of Baudelaire’s writings in Russia and its appropriation or mis-appropriation for their own aesthetic or political aims by such disparate groups as the narodniki (populist revolutionaries) in the 1860s, the Symbolists in the 1890s and beyond, and the Soviets.

[31] Pyman points out that in Russia, the terms “decadent,” “Symbolist,” and “modernist” often overlapped. “Although attempts to sort out the terminology were made by the protagonists themselves from the very beginnings of the movement, it is impossible to indicate a specific time when ‘Symbolism’ can be said to have succeeded ‘decadence’, or to distinguish between ‘decadents’ and ‘symbolists’ in the modernist camp, since the two tendencies existed concurrently in the same people and at the same time….Indeed the epithet ‘decadent’ was applied at the time to all those seeking new ways in art and literature by their opponents, and often accepted by the innovators in a spirit of bravado: ‘We have been labelled the children of degeneracy and we have calmly and humbly accepted this senseless and insulting appellation of decadents’ wrote Diaghilev in his first editorial in [Mir iskusstva] …. Nevertheless, there was evolution away from fin-de-siècle decadence (associated with extreme individualism) through Symbolism (the discovery of a new ‘language’) towards reintegration.” Pyman, Russian Symbolism, 377. For a translation of Diaghilev’s full essay, “Our Supposed Decline,” see “Diaghilev’s ‘Complicated Questions’” translated, edited and with an introduction by Joan Acocella, 76-84. In Garafola and Van Norman Baer, The Ballets Russes and Its World.

[32] Benois, Reminiscences, 171.

[33] Pyman, Russian Symbolism, 380. Nikolay M. Minsky (1855-1937) was a writer associated with the Symbolist movement. Prince A. I. Urosov (1843-1900) was a Moscow lawyer also interested in Baudelaire and Flaubert. The Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont (1867-1942) wrote that Urosov was “one of the main popularizers (rasprostraniteli) of Baudelaire’s poetry in Russia, and one of the first who provided moral support for the representatives of the movement in poetry which received from the crowd the condemning name of decadence.” From Balmont’s memoirs, quoted in translation in Wanner, Baudelaire, 71. Balmont was a contributor to Mir iskusstva. See also Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ed. Nietzsche in Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

[34] Quoted in translation in “Diaghilev’s Early Writings,” translated and edited by John E. Bowlt, 68-69. In Garafola and Van Norman Baer, The Ballets Russes and Its World. Originally appeared as Diaghilev, “V chas itogov,” Vesi 2, no. 4 (April 1905), 45-46.

[35] Volynsky was the literary editor of Severnyi Vestnik. While not particularly a Symbolist himself, he was responsible for publishing works by Minsky, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, and other Symbolists such as Fedor Sologub and Konstantin Balmont, as well as translations of works by Maeterlinck, Verlaine and others. See Pyman, Russian Symbolism, 19-20; Stanley J. Rabinowitz, “The House That Petipa Built: Visions and Villains of Akim Volynskii,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, 16, no. 1 (Summer 1998), 26-66; and Rabinowitz, “Against the Grain: Akim Volynskii and the Russian Ballet,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, 14, no. 1 (Summer 1996), 3-41.

[36] These included Novyi Put' (New Path) (1903-04), Vesy (Libra) (1904-09), Voprosy Zhizni (Questions of Life) (1905), Pereval (The Divide) (1906-07), Fakely (Torches) (1906-08), Zolotoe runo (Golden Fleece) (1906-09), Apollon (1909-17), and Trudi i Dni (Works and Days) (1912-16). Of the many publishing houses that issued collections and miscellanies, Musaget, Skorpion, and Sirin were the most prominent. See Peterson, History, for a detailed and chronological discussion of these Russian Symbolist publications.

[37] Bakst returned to St. Petersburg to fulfill a commission from Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, President of the Imperial Academy of Arts. With the doors opened in Russia through this connection, Bakst was on his way to becoming a society painter when Diaghilev appropriated Bakst to participate in Mir iskusstva and various art exhibitons.

[38] Buckle, Diaghilev, 58.

[39] The Neonationalists included, among others, Vrubel, Golovin, Serov, Korovin, Polenova, Levitan, and Nesterov. Among the St. Petersburg group were Benois, Bakst, Anna Oustroumova-Lebedeva, and Eugène Lanceray.

[40] Acocella, “Reception,” 159-60. A number of European graphic artists, particularly Aubrey Beardsley, were featured in Mir iskusstva and influenced the look of the journal.

[41] For the first time, Diaghilev added a literary supplement to the Yearbook; it included articles by Benois and ballet critic Valerian Svietlov, and newly-commissioned portraits of former Director Vsevolozhsky and others. Buckle, Diaghilev, 60-61. See various years of Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov [Russian Imperial Theatres Annual] at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (hereafter JRDD-NYPL).

[42] By the end of 1902 the Merezhkovskys had left Mir iskusstva with the aim of pursuing a more theurgic interpretation of symbolism than Diaghilev could countenance. They began Novyi Put’ , which lasted two years, and organized the Religious-Philosophical Meetings of 1901-03. Peterson, History, 40-41.

[43] Levinson, Bakst: Artist’s Life, 89-90, 101. Levinson (1887-1933), a dance critic and biographer, lived in St. Petersburg until the 1920s; he certainly was aware of these productions and may have attended them in his youth. For reprinted essays and background about Levinson, including an extensive bibliography and biographical information, see André Levinson, André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties. Introduction by Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola, eds. (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University, 1991). Also André Levinson, Ballet Old and New, trans. from the Russian by Susan Cook Summer (New York: Dance Horizons, 1982).

[44] For a record of this trip to Greece, see Bakst, Sketchbook [1907?], JRDD-NYPL, (S) *MGZGV-Res. Historians generally agree that the trip took place in 1905.

[45] “Recently the elements of painting were the air, the sun and foliage; those of painting of the future are man and stone.” Bakst, “Les Formes Nouvelles du Classicisme dans l’Art,” La Grande Revue, June 25, 1910, 800. Bakst’s emphasis on childlike simplicity echoed the words of Fyodor Sologub’s 1908 essay, “The Theater of One Will”: “And no matter how different the external contents of a drama are, we always want from it – if we have still remained somewhat alive from the peaceful days of our childhood – what we wanted before from our children’s games – fiery ecstasy that abducts our soul from the tight chains of a boring and meager life. Enchantment and ecstasy – this is what attracts each of us into the theater.” “Theater of One Will,” ed. and trans. Peterson, Anthology, 108-09.

Bakst’s essay in La Grande Revue made an extended point of praising the French artists David, Ingres, Millet, Gauguin, and Matisse, as well as advocating the merits of the academic system over the individual artist. Given his outsider status in the Russian academy and his own highly individual work, one could cynically wonder how hard Bakst was positioning himself for a Légion d’Honneur award, which he eventually received in 1913.

[46] Benois, “Letters on Art: The Salon Once Again,” Rech, February 10, 1909, quoted in translation in Pruzhan, Bakst, 220.

[47] Letter from Bakst in Paris to A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva in St. Petersburg, November 12, 1910, quoted in translation in Pruzhan, Bakst, 222. Ostroumova-Lebedeva (1871-1955) specialized in engraving and woodcuts and first contributed artwork to Mir iskusstva in 1900. She studied watercolors with Bakst in the first decade of the twentieth century; many of her woodcuts were colored with watercolors. (She was severely allergic to oil paints.) The artist was a life-long resident of St. Petersburg, except for travels in Europe, and many of her works emphasized the neoclassical style of St. Petersburg architecture.

[48] Letter dated April 15/18, 1911, I. Zilbarshtein and V. Samkov, Sergei Diaghilev i russkoe iskusstvo Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo Vol. 2 (Moscow: 1982), 116; quoted in translation in Schouvaloff, “Bakst, Designer,” 58.

[49] Carter, “The Art of Leon Bakst,” T.P.’s Magazine, July 1911, 523. The preface to Carter’s article reads: “In the following timely article, Mr. Huntley Carter gives the first English account of Leon Bakst, the master spirit of the modern ballet and one of the greatest influences in the theatrical and art worlds of to-day. The article is specially opportune in view of the visit to Covent Garden of the Russian Ballet” (p. 515). The company, which Diaghilev billed carefully as “The Imperial Russian Ballet” in London since some of the ballerinas were evidently on the summer-leave payroll of the Imperial Ballet, had been called “Saison Russe” in Europe. Its first appearance in London was from June 21-July 31, 1911. For a facsimile of the programme of dances, see MacDonald, Diaghilev, 26.

[50] André Levinson, “The New Ballet and the ‘Saisons Russes’ 1909-1911,” Ballet Old and New, trans. Susan Cook Summer (New York: Dance Horizons, 1982), 8. The essay was written in 1913 and published in book form, with other of Levinson’s essays, in 1918 as Staryi i novyi balet. Levinson published reviews of the Ballets Russes in Rech in 1913, though Cook does not specify the source of this particular essay.

[51] Benois, Reminiscences, 315. Benois continued his praise: “His décor is executed…with a simple and broad virtuosity in the most telling colours; the performers, too, who move against this background in Fokine’s amazing clever combinations, are Bakst’s creation, and are in complete harmony with the décor. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say I have never seen such absolute harmony of colour on the stage.”

[52] Rose Strunsky, “Léon Bakst on the Modern Ballet,” New York Tribune, September 5, 1915.

[53] Ivanov, “The Precepts of Symbolism,” ed. and trans. Peterson, Anthology, 144-45. Ivanov’s article in Apollon (1910) was based on lectures given in Moscow and St. Petersburg of that year.

[54] For a detailed discussion of the Rothschilds and Bakst’s paintings, see Diana Souhami, Bakst: The Rothschild Panels of The Sleeping Beauty (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 1992). The panels reside at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, a former estate of the Rothschild family that is now in the National Trust.

[55] The panels were not titled, but rather numbered 1-7.

[56] Letter from Bakst to Gaston Wormser. April 1, 1917. Quoted in Souhami, 34. Original in the Rothschild Archive, London. Wormser was the homme d’affaires of Edmond de Rothschild, James’s father.

[57] Letters from Bakst to Wormser. November 4, 1922 and November 4, 1923. Quoted in Souhami, 45-48. In 1923 the panels had not been installed, prompting Bakst’s description of “ill-fated,” and their location had to Bakst’s distress been shifted from the drawing room to the dining room. (Bakst had designed the drawing room furniture to complement the panels but the commission was not completed.) By March 1924 the panels had still not been installed. Bakst died in December 1924.

[58] See David Vaughan, “Further Annals of the Sleeping Beauty: Anna Pavlova, 1916,” Ballet Review 3, no. 2 (1969), 4-18; Keith Money, Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art (New York: Knopf, 1982), 234-45; Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 177-214; and the R. H. Burnside Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. Burnside owned the New York Hippodrome and was the General Stage Director for The Big Show.

[59] One critic commented, “Apparently no one can mold a Hippodrome chorus into the semblance of a ballet worthy of Mme. Pavlowa. With all its shortcomings, however, the second act of the show will attract thousands daily.” Money, 237, 239.

[60] The New York Herald described the finale: “Just before the curtain the flying ballet comes down to the footlights and then flies almost to the top of the proscenium where it forms a semicircle in mid air and awaits the curtain.” R. H. Burnside Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

[61] NY Commercial Bulletin, September 2, 1916. R. H. Burnside Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

[62] One of the notes on a to-do list typed after a dress rehearsal reads, “Good Fairy must not stand so long after coming out of the fountain.” R. H. Burnside Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

[63] “Dillingham Has Done It Again,” The New York Times, September 1, 1916, 7.

[64] “The Sleeping Beauty is partially-operatic in form, and several recitatives were sung by Letty Yorke and Henry Taylor.” Musical America, September 9, 1916, 17.

[65] Money, 243.

[66] NY Telegraph, November 28, 1916. R. H. Burnside Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

[67] Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of Costumes and Curtains from Diaghilev and de Basil Ballets (London and Bradford, U.K.: Lund Humphries, 1968); auction of July 17, 1968, 181. Even with smaller stages Bakst was notorious for creating wonderful miniature set designs that created enormous difficulties for the backdrop painters. Vladimir Polunin, who with his wife Elizabeth painted several Sleeping Princess backdrops, wrote of working with Bakst, “To transfer a design by Bakst into suitable proportions for the stage proved to be a difficult task, for he often painted his effective designs with more regard for their pictorial effect than for the use of the scene painter.” Vladimir Polunin, The Continental Method of Scene Painting, ed. Cyril W. Beaumont (London: C. W. Beaumont, 1927), 39-40.

[68] Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 181.

[69] The Fine Art Society (London).

[70] Vaughan points out that the reference to “Pavlowa’s famous gavotte” in the Commercial Bulletin could refer to a different dance, “Pavlova’s ‘famous’ gavotte, a pas de deux arranged by Clustine (ca. 1913), the Gavotte Pavlova, was to music by Lincke (The Glow-worm!). It seems unlikely that she would have interpolated this number…into The Sleeping Beauty.” Vaughan, 6. It seems more likely that the 1916 reviewer mistakenly wrote gavotte instead of chaconne.

[71] Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 179.

[72] The Ballets Russes engagement at the Coliseum Theatre ran from September 5, 1918 through March 29, 1919, and Stoll arranged a stint at the Hippodrome in Manchester during April 1919. The English premieres included The Good-Humoured Ladies [Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur] (1917), Sadko (1916), Midnight Sun (1915), and Contes Russes (1917). The remaining repertoire consisted of eight other ballets. See MacDonald, 214.

[73] Bakst’s backdrop design for Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur was repainted by the Polunins with changes made by Diaghilev, who had disliked Bakst’s experiment with making the buildings curve inward giving a kind of optical effect. In any case, the proportions of the design did not fit in the Coliseum’s stage and were readjusted by Diaghilev. He did, however, preserve a watercolor effect that Polunin created by dabbing at the paint. Bakst was in Paris and sent a telegram of approval. See Buckle, Diaghilev, 345-51 for a discussion of this time period.

[74] For an extensive discussion of the contributions of these artists, and others, see Melissa A. McQuillan, “Painters and the Ballet, 1917-1926: An Aspect of the Relationship Between Art and Theatre,” doctoral thesis, New York University, 1979; and Juliet Bellow, “Clothing the Corps: How the Avant-Garde and the Ballets Russes Fashioned the Modern Body,” doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2005.

[75] Léonide Massine, My Life in Ballet (London: Macmillan, 1968), 133.

[76] Polunin, 53.

[77] Diaghilev, program for La Boutique Fantasque, which premiered June 5, 1919 at the Alhambra Theatre. Diaghilev’s above-cited remarks were not included in the Théâtre de l’Opéra programme (December 1919, January-February 1920), which reproduced both Derain’s décor for La Boutique Fantasque and Bakst’s revised décor for Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur. The illustrations in the French program indicate that Bakst’s original backdrop was not used, since the lines were straight. Yet, the Argument referred to the previous optical effect of the backdrop: “Pour ce ballet, dont l’action fut placée dans une petite ville d’Italie, le peintre Bakst et M. Léonide Massine ont composé un spectacle ultra-moderne, mais dans lequel entre toute la séduction du XVIIIe siècle. Le peintre Bakst a realizé avec son décor le premier essai de déformation de perspective au théâtre.” [For this ballet, in which the action took place in a small Italian village, the painter Bakst and M. Leonide Massine have composed an ultra-modern spectacle, but one with all the charm of the eighteenth century. The painter Bakst has realized in his décor the first use of distorted perspective in the theatre.] This could have been an oversight on the part of Diaghilev; or perhaps Derain did not need to be promoted as a painter in the “purest French classical” tradition. Alhambra program, V&A Theatre Collection, London. Théâtre de l’Opéra program, JRDD-NYPL.

[78] Bell, “The New Ballet,” New Republic, July 30, 1919, 415-16.

[79] Birnbaum, Bakst, 9-11.

[80] Fry, “The New Theatrical Art That Honors the Eye,” Current Opinion, October 1919, 232-33. Fry also wrote that “M. Bakst was a most effective and ingenious designer, sufficiently alert to pick up ideas from all sides, but he did not himself stand in the front rank of creative designers.” “M. Larionow and the Russian Ballet,” Burlington Magazine, March 1919, 112.

[81] Maurice Brillant, “Les oeuvres et les hommes,” Le correspondent, February 25, 1921, 744-45. The similarities in terminology between Brillant, Diaghilev, Fry and Bell are striking.

[82] As MacDonald pointed out (Diaghilev, 269), Stoll was Chairman and Managing Director of the Coliseum Syndicate and the Alhambra Company and it was technically speaking the Board of Directors who voted to advance Diaghilev such a large sum (and voted again, before the premiere, for two additional advances of 5,000 each). However, Stoll was known to have become enamored of the Russian ballet after visiting St. Petersburg in 1909 and seeing Tamara Karsavina in The Swan Lake. MacDonald, Diaghilev, 18.

[83] Fonds Kochno, Bibliothèque Nationale.

[84] Telegram from Nouvel to Diaghilev dated July 8, 1921, and the hotel receipts for Diaghilev, Kochno, Barocchi, and Bakst in Bournemouth, from July 16, 1921. Fonds Kochno, Bibliothèque Nationale.

[85] Levinson, Bakst: Artist’s Life, 13. In his account Levinson omitted mention of Bakst’s work for Pavlova in 1916 but did acknowledge Bakst’s adaptation of the Bibiena designs (hence the “improvisation”).

[86] Spencer, Bakst, 203. Part of Spencer’s grand biographical thesis is that Bakst was “a classic case of manic-depression…. The root of Bakst’s problem was a lack of love, the feeling of neglect in childhood – clichéd though that sounds,” 10. Clichés aside, the claim of ill health may have been Spencer’s fabrication. Beaumont, who unlike Spencer had attended Sleeping Princess rehearsals, reported that sitting in the theatre, Diaghilev and Stravinsky “would be joined by Bakst, a brisk, blue-eyed dapper little man…who walked with that elastic poise which comes from daily fencing exercise.” Cyril W. Beaumont, The Diaghilev Ballet in London: A Personal Record (London: Putnam, 1940), 193-94.

[87]Letter from Bakst to Diaghilev, March 24, 1919, quoted in Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 193-94. The original letter, in Russian, is in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

[88] “The decorations faded, the costumes wore out, and the masterwork fell apart,” wrote Benois, “after some ten or fifteen years.” Quoted in translation in Scholl, Sleeping Beauty, A Legend in Progress (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2004), 104, from Alexandre Benois, Moi vosponimaniya (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), I, 606. It is not clear that Bakst and Diaghilev saw the 1914 Sleeping Beauty in St. Petersburg, although Benois did since he compared Korovin’s décor with Bakst’s of 1921. Benois, Reminiscences, 132.

[89] Novosti i birzhevaya gazeta, January 5, 1890, 3, quoted in translation in Wiley, 189.

[90] Konstantin Appollonovich Skalkovsky, Novoe vremya, January 5, 1890, 3, quoted in translation in Wiley, 190.

[91] Wiley, 107.

[92] Buckle, Diaghilev, 397.

[93] Elizabeth Souritz, Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s, trans. Lynn Visson; edited, with additional translation by Sally Banes (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990), 259. Souritz notes that for the 1922 Beauty, Lopukhov “enlivened the ensemble pantomime scenes, for example, the one in which Aurora plays with the spindle: part of the crowd rushes after Aurora, trying to take the spindle away from her. The women knitting in the pantomime scene at the beginning of the first act, the staging of the prologue when Carabosse occupies the king’s throne, and many other scenes were all reintroduced.” Souritz, 258.

[94] On Bakst’s lawsuit, MacDonald, Diaghilev, 271. On the Coliseum water leak, MacDonald, 284.

[95] The backdrop, pelmet, and two side legs for Scene V, now in the V&A Theatre Collection, London, are discussed below. The backdrops from Scenes I-III may have disintegrated on their own, owing to the cheapness of the cloth and fireproofing chemicals. (Scene IV used the Wedding backdrop, hidden in the shadows until the kiss.) Polunin, Diaghilev’s London scene-painter, writes that “the canvas, which had been purchased in great quantity, was worthless; the priming fell off, while the colours peeled away and changed in tone before our eyes. The fire-proofing with which the [Sleeping Princess] canvas had been treated was so strong that it destroyed or altered every one, impaired the adhesiveness of the medium and absorbed even the slightest moisture in the atmosphere due to a shower of rain. Although each piece was repainted five or six times, which improved the tone for a short while, it was impossible to obtain a satisfactory result…daily a whitish deposit of unknown origin covered the whole canvas like a hoar frost.” Polunin, 67.

[96] For a facsimile of the letter, see MacDonald, Diaghilev, 293.

[97] Massine, Life, 178.

[98] The foundation was originally named Educational Ballets Ltd. In 1939 its name was changed to Russian Ballet Development Company Ltd., and at some point was changed again to the Diaghilev and de Basil Ballet Foundation. Diamantidi reportedly approached Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center regarding his costumes and scenery, without success. See Alexander Schouvaloff, The Art of Ballets Russes (New Haven and London [In Association with the Wadsworth Atheneum]: Yale University Press, 1997), 31-33.

[99] Sotheby Costumes and Curtains, v. Introduction and descriptions by Richard Buckle. The Catalogue, with its detailed descriptions and many photographs, provides an invaluable resource in analyzing the décor of Sleeping Princess.

[100] Of Bakst’s independent work for Ida Rubinstein, Le Martyre de St Sébastien (1911), Helen of Sparta (1912), and La Pisanella (1913) were evening-length productions. Some non-balletic works included the revue Hullo, Tango! (1913) at the London Hippodrome and Aladin ou la Lampe Merveilleuse (1919), in three acts, at the Théâtre Marigny, Paris.

[101] In Scene IV, the Awakening, there were no new costumes.

[102] For example, Richard Capell of the Daily Mail wrote the following: “Last night’s Sleeping Beauty was a young lady at the Versailles of 200 years ago.” Daily Mail, November 3, 1921. The critic, historian, and publisher Cyril Beaumont, in 1921 the Londoner probably closest to those producing Sleeping Princess, did not at the time attribute much more than superficial “decoration” to Bakst’s scenery. His enthusiasm for the ballet was tempered by this somewhat dismissive and mildly francophobic assessment of the décor: “The costumes designed by Bakst were conceived in that spirit of florid magnificence characteristic of the French nobility of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The scenery was equally magnificent and typical.” Beaumont, The Sleeping Princess, Part One, Illustrations by Randolph Schwabe (London: C. W. Beaumont, 1921), 14.

[103] “Une Dernière Étape des «Ballets Russes»: La Belle au Bois Dormant,” La Revue Musicale, November 1, 1921, 134/230 [double pagination]. Levinson must have attended the répétition générale or an earlier rehearsal since the ballet premiered November 2.

[104] Levinson, Designs, 17-18. “Sham realism” would seem to refer to just the kind of Mariinsky décor discussed above. Levinson refers to several Italians who worked in the Russian courts in the 18^th century. Pietro di Gottardo Gonzaga designed the decoration for several gates commemorating the coronations of Pavel I (1797) and Alexander I (1801). He also produced a stage design, “Temple with a Columned, Rotunda with Statues of Philosophers,” which Levinson may have had in mind when he mentions “colonnades en rotonde.” This design resides in the State Hermitage Museum. (fig. 40) Giuseppe Valeriani (1690-1761) designed the sets for the first opera with a Russian libretto, by Alexander Sumarakov, called Tsefal i Prokris (1755). The design itself (at least the image available on-line) bears no resemblance to any of Bakst’s Sleeping Princess work. (fig. 41). Empress Catherine II commissioned the opera from the composer Francesco Araja, and it was performed by his Italian opera troupe. Pietro Gradizzi and his son Francesco were theatre architects and painters for Catherine II in the mid- to late-1770s. Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554) was a Mannerist architect known for a treatise on architecture written in 1545 and his decoration of the Château de Fontainebleau.

[105] Echoing some of Levinson’s observations while adding his own, W. A. Propert describes Bakst’s décor in 1931. “Architecture of the great scenes was, of course, founded on the experiments of Piranesi and the Bibbienas; the dresses on the records of the Vienna masques and the Versailles ballets.” Propert, Russian Ballet 1921-1929, 11-12.

[106] Deborah Howard, “Sumptuous Revival of Bakst’s Designs for Diaghilev’s Sleeping Beauty,” Apollo, April 1970, 301-08.

[107] Bakst was also studying frescoes for the Rothschild project. Souhami, 34.

[108] Hélène Leclerc writes that this was the first major exhibition to focus on the Bibienas, and that Corrado Ricci’s I Bibiena: Architetti Teatrali was published in conjunction with the exhibition. Leclerc, “Les Bibiena: Une Dynastie de Scénographes Baroques,” Revue d’Histoire du Théâtre, 23, no. 1 (1971), 10. Ricci, I Bibiena (Milano: Alfieri & Lacroix, 1915). Ricci (1858-1934) was the author of numerous histories of baroque art and architecture, and biographies of baroque artists, which appeared in Italian, French, and German. Mayer noted in his dissertation that Ferdinando’s Atrio design had been reprinted in I Bibiena but did not suggest that Bakst had consulted it, nor that he was mentioned by name. Mayer, 238.

[109] Ricci, 27. Unpublished translation by Giuseppe Gerbino.

[110] Ferdinando complained about these inaccuracies in Architettura Civile: Ai Lettore: “My frequent travels and undertakings kept me from supervising the illustrations.” A. Hyatt Mayor, “The Bibiena Family,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, 4, no. 1 (Summer 1945), 29.

[111] On the Bibiena family, their contribution to baroque architecture and scenography, and some reproductions, see: A. Hyatt Mayor, The Bibiena Family (New York: H. Bittner and Company, 1945); Leclerc, “Bibiena,” 7-39; Deanna Lenzi, “Da Bibbiena alle corti d’Europa, la più celebre dinastia di architetti teatrali e scenografi di età barocca,” I Galli Bibiena: Una Dinastia di Architetti e Scenografi, ed. Deanna Lenzi, Atti del Convegno 1995 (Bibbiena, Italia: Accademia Galli Bibiena, 1997), 11-33; Anna Maria Matteucci, “I Galli Bibiena nell’architettura del Settecento,” I Galli Bibiena: Una Dinastia di Architetti e Scenografi, ed. Deanna Lenzi, Atti del Convegno 1995 (Bibbiena, Italia: Accademia Galli Bibiena, 1997), 35-54; Pierre Frantz, “Décor et action à l’époque des Bibiena,” I Bibiena, una famiglia in scena: da Bologna all’Europa, ed. Daniela Gallingani, (Firenze: Alinea Editrice, 2002), 41-49; and Deanna Lenzi and Jadranka Bentini, I Bibiena: una famiglia europea (Bologna: Marsilio, 2000). Also see relevant sections of Janos Scholz, ed., Baroque and Romantic Stage Design, introduction by A. Hyatt Mayor (New York: H. Bittner, 1950); James Allen Hatfield, The Relationship between Late Baroque Architecture and Scenography 1703-1778; The Italian Influence of Ferdinando and Giuseppe Bibiena, Filippo Juvarra, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1981) (doctoral thesis, Wayne State University, 1980); and Allardyce Nicoll, The Development of the Theatre; A Study of Theatrical Art from the Beginnings to the Present Day (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966).

For archival documents, reprinted images, and exhibition catalogues, see Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Varie opere di Prospettiva (Bologna, 1703-08); Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, L’architettura civile (Parma, 1711); Giuseppe Bibiena, Architetture e Prospettive (Augsburg: Pfeffel, 1740); Dunbar H. Ogden, trans. and with commentary, The Italian Baroque Stage: Documents by Giulio Troili, Andrea Pozzo, Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Baldassare Orsini (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978); Monumenta Scenica: The Art of the Theatre, vol. 1, Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena (Vienna: National Library, 1926); Maria Alice Mourisca Beaumont, Eighteenth-Century Scenic and Architectural Design: Drawings by the Galli Bibiena Family from Collections in Portugal (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 1990); Giuseppe Galli da Bibiena, Architectural and Perspective Designs, introduction by A. Hyatt Mayor (New York: Dover Reprint, 1964); and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Drawings by the Bibiena Family (Philadelphia: The Winchell Company, 1968).

[112] For a family tree, see Mayor, Bibiena, 6.

Shcherbakova reports that Paisiello wrote several operas for St. Petersburg while in residence there: Nitteti (libretto in Russian), Lucinda e Armidoro, Le Nozze d’Amore, and La Bottega del caffé. Paisiello and Carlo Bibiena arrived at the same time, and Shcherbakova speculates that the composer was integral in bringing Carlo Bibiena to Russia. Shcherbakova, “Carlo Galli Bibiena in Saint Petersburg,” I Bibiena una famiglia in scena: da Bologna all’Europa, ed. Daniela Gallingani (Firenze: Alinea Editrice, 2002), 119-25.

It is likely Levinson knew of Carlo Bibiena’s work in St. Petersburg since he was cognizant of the prominent Italian scene painters active there in the eighteenth century. (He also mentioned the Bibienas but did not specify which one.) Certainly Bakst knew of Carlo from the Nevsky Pickwickian meetings at the Benois family apartment in the 1890s: “My father [wrote Benois] had in his collection three magnificent large theatrical sketches by the last Bibiena, which I greatly admired. They made me prize the art of the great Bolognese master very highly.” Benois, Reminiscences, 101. Benois’s father had studied architecture in Italy and worked for Nicholas I but fell out of favor with Alexander II in the 1850s. Thirty-eight signed Carlo Bibiena drawings have resided in the Hermitage Cabinet of Prints since the late 18^th century. Bakst did not emulate Carlo’s scenic designs, but familiarity with the Bibiena name may have led him to the Milan exhibition.

[113] The scena per angolo is sometimes described as emulating the prow of a boat heading toward the audience from an angle. Leclerc mentions the probable source for this analogy, an engraving of a Ferdinando Bibiena operatic scene from 1687. “La perspective peinte, figurant des architectures est encore centrée, mais les éléments de la symétrie sont ici, trois édifices agressifs, présentés sur l’angle, deux dans le lointain d’allées fuyantes, le troisieme s’avançant au centre, en éperon incisif, comme la proue d’un navire fendant l’eau.” [The painted perspective representing architecture is still centered, but here the elements of symmetry are three aggressive edifices, presented at an angle, two in distant receding lines, the third advancing in the center, with a piercing jab, like the prow of a boat cutting the water.] Leclerc, 17. For a discussion of scena per angolo see Leclerc, 16-20; Mayor, 22-24; and Claudia Müller, “Ferdinando Galli Bibienas ‘scene di nuova invenzione’” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 49 Bd., H. 3 (1986), 356-75. Erwin Panofsky discusses the development of the oblique view in paintings, not scenography, in Perspective as Symbolic Form (1927; repr. New York: Zone, 1997), 150-54.

[114] Esteban (Stefano) Arteaga (1747-1799) was a Spanish ex-Jesuit priest who wrote about opera and aesthetics. Quoted in translation in Mayor, 24. Original source not given; possibly from Arteaga’s critical history of opera Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano (Bologna: 1783).

[115] Wiley, 131-32.

[116] The Marche was a common feature of Petipa ballets; the dancer Tamara Karsavina noted how dated this kind of processional was by the 20^th century: “Petipa had a remarkable command of mass on the stage and sometimes the form taken by his ballabiles showed considerable imagination. But his productions were all founded on the same formula…. In his later years he made some attempts to modernise his art to accord more nearly with the present time, but he never felt at ease when making these efforts and they were unsuccessful. His ballets, which even now [1912] have not disappeared from the repertory of the Maryinsky Theatre, were crowded with marches and processions which often interrupted, without any kind of logical excuse, long, continuous scenes of pantomime and beautifully composed dances.” Conversation quoted in Cyril Beaumont, Complete Book of Ballets (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1941), 384-85.

The extent to which Bakst rethought the Petipa device has not been appreciated in the literature.

[117] Lydia Sokolova, Dancing for Diaghilev, ed. Richard Buckle (London: Murray, 1960), 190.

[118] Levinson, Designs, 14.

[119] John Bowlt notes the kinetic aspect of some of Bakst’s costumes in his earlier designs for Hyppolytus and Schéhérazade: “The loose folds of the garments, the belts and bangles, the braids of hair, the colorful patterns of the fabrics [in Merezhkovsky’s Hyppolytus at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, 1901] – these appurtenances emphasized and extended the body’s movement, just as the feathers and veils did in Schéhérazade. Bakst’s exposure of the dynamic force of the human form was a simple, but radical development, and, inevitably, it shocked audiences accustomed to theatrical costume as a means of disguise and ornament.” Silver Age, 228. Bowlt has not discussed this in relation to the costumes of Sleeping Princess.

Jean Cocteau’s description of the entrance of Ida Rubinstein in Cléopâtre (1909), which was choreographed by Bakst, demonstrates the designer’s dramatic control: “Then appeared a long ritual procession. First, musicians who drew from their tall oval lutes full mellow chords…. [then] all the equipage of a royal galley. Finally, balanced on the shoulders of six stalwarts a kind of chest of gold and ebony was borne aloft…. The chest was placed in the centre of the temple, its doors were opened, and from it was lifted a kind of glorified mummy, swathed in veils, which was placed upright on ivory pattens. Then four slaves… unwound the first veil, which was red wrought with lotuses and silver crocodiles, the second, which was green with all the histories of the dynasties in golden filagree upon it, the third which was orange shot with a hundred prismatic hues, and so on until they reached the twelfth, which was of indigo, and under which the outline of a woman could be discerned. Each of the veils unwound itself in a fashion of its own: one demanded a host of subtle touches, another the deliberation required in peeling a walnut, a third the airy detachment of the petal from the rose, and the eleventh, most difficult of all, came away all in one piece like the bark of the eucalyptus tree. The twelfth veil of deep blue released Madame Rubinstein, who let it fall herself with a sweeping circular gesture, and stood before us, perched unsteadily on her pattens, slightly bent forward with something of the movement of the Ibis’s wings, and sick with waiting, for within her dark retreat she had felt, as we had, the effect of the sublimely enervating music of her retinue. On her head she wore a little blue wig with short golden braids on either side of her face, and so she stood, with vacant eyes, pallid cheeks, and open mouth, before the spell-bound audience, penetratingly beautiful, like the pungent perfume of some exotic essence.” Cocteau, “Notes on the Ballets,” trans. Harry Melvill, Fine Art Society (London), The Decorative Art of Léon Bakst (1913; repr. New York: Dover Publications, 1972), 29-30.

[120] Levinson, Designs, 14-15.

[121] Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 143. Sudeikina, then the wife of the artist Sergei Sudeikine, later married Stravinsky. The Princess Royal was a non-dancing role, unlisted in the program. In French aristocratic nomenclature she probably represented the sister of the Queen, which might explain why her costume was the same design as the Queen’s but done in a different color. The costume of the Princess Royal survived in good condition and was auctioned on July 17, 1968 to someone named Steed for £210.

[122] Ibid., 121.

[123] Ibid., 135.

[124] Helena Hammond, “Cecchetti, Carabosse and The Sleeping Beauty,” in Selected papers from ‘An International Celebration of Enrico Cecchetti’ – A Society for Dance Research online publication, 2007, 16. “Implicated – even if erroneously… – in the slaughter and carnage, Catherine was rapidly demonized in the historical imagination as the figure responsible for France’s subsequent descent into a century of social strife, regicide, and rebellion…. The identification of Carabosse with Catherine de’ Medici and, by association, with the century of misrule which plunged France into darkness, works in highly appropriate ways within the libretto for The Sleeping Beauty.” Hammond, 15-16.

[125] For example, Vera Nemchinova’s train as Carnation Fairy is described thus: “Triangular train of silver tissue edged with gold fringe and with gold braid sewn with artificial magenta carnations and with one bow of silver tissue lined with magenta velvet.” Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 127. Trains for the Fairies Humming Birds, Pine Woods, Song Birds, and Cherry Blossom also were auctioned. Ibid., 125, 139, 143. For a photo of Fairy Lilac with her train (see fig. 60).

[126] The young dancer Patrick Kaye, known here as Patrikeeff and later as Anton Dolin, was one of the Royal Pages.

[127] In the Mariinsky productions children from the academy’s lower school were often placed upstage to create an illusion of distance.

[128] In discussing Balanchine’s staging of the Garland Dance, Arlene Croce notes its geometry: “Balanchine weaves the floral arches into the dance, and he uses them as colonnades for the entrance of the children’s corps, just as Petipa must have done. (The Bolshoi’s ‘Petipa’ production of The Sleeping Beauty has this same entrance.) The ‘Garland Dance’ is essentially a background, scene-setting configuration, not a showpiece. It’s a ponderous carousel that might have been designed by Watteau. The formations are all circles and grids – no dramatic diagonals or wedges, as in ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ – and there are only about three steps, all obligatory.” “Tchaikovsky,” Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), 368.

[129] The Sleeping Princess, Part One, 20. Also, Beaumont, Diaghilev: Personal Record, 196. Though no children have come forward to relate their experiences in The Sleeping Princess, Beaumont’s specific description coupled with Schwabe’s illustration (fig. 64) indicate at least two child roles.

[130] The orchestra part scores for Le Mariage d’Aurore at the Harvard Theatre Collection indicate that many of the ballet numbers were lifted directly from the Alhambra production, with new “numbers” written in. This ballet is also known as Aurora’s Wedding.

[131] Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 149, 153.

[132] Sotheby & Co., Catalogue principally of Diaghilev Ballet Material: Décor and Costume Designs, Portraits and Posters (London and Bradford, UK: 1968); To be sold at Sotheby & Co., July 18, 1968; 16.

[133] C. W. Beaumont, The Sleeping Princess, Part Two, illustrated by Randolph Schwabe (London: C. W. Beaumont, 1921), 5.

[134] Beaumont, Diaghilev, 202. It is not clear what piece of scenery would have been projecting. There was no Panorama, as Levinson notes below.

[135] This and the following two quotations are from Levinson, Designs, 16, 15 and 16.

[136] Waclaw Lednicki, Pushkin's Bronze Horseman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1955), 140-41. The translation from the Russian is by Lednicki.

[137] Poem and comment on Blok from Annensky, “On Contemporary Lyrism,” ed. and trans. Peterson, Anthology, 130-31, 214n.

[138] Wanner, “Aleksandr Blok’s Sculptural Myth,” The Slavic and East European Journal, 40, no. 2 (Summer 1996), 236.

[139] Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 159. Solferino pink is a light, purplish pink.

[140] Duke and Duchess costumes, ibid., 157; Baroness costumes, ibid., 165; Marquis and Marchioness costumes, ibid., 161.

[141] Ibid., 162.

[142] In later productions Prince Charming was given more virtuoso steps, and thus usually wore tights with a short jacket and ballet shoes.

[143] Anecdotal accounts by Bakst’s contemporaries such as Karsavina and Benois mention this, as do the biographies by Spencer and Schouvaloff. Bakst’s obsession with Ida Rubinstein and his nude studies of her were well known among the Ballets Russes group. Bakst’s sexually explicit Odalisque series (undated, but around 1910-11) and Erotic Study (1911) are figural examples. See Spencer, 166.

[144] The use of sexual imagery in Bakst’s scenography has not been noted in the literature. I am grateful to Lynn Garafola for bringing to my attention the design of Thamar. In that ballet the queen seduces a captive prince. After she copulates with him (offstage), she slays him and tosses the body into the river. See Garafola, Diaghilev, 33-34.

[145] In 1909 the Symbolist Viacheslav Ivanov compared the goddess in Bakst’s Greece-inspired painting, Terror Antiquus, to the idea of the Eternal Feminine in a lecture that was turned into an article in Zolotoe runo. See Kennedy, “Mir iskusstva” Group, 293. In a later essay Ivanov explained the relation as he saw it between beauty, eroticism, and Symbolism: “Plato’s depiction of the paths of love is a definition of Symbolism. From enamorment of the beautiful body, the soul, growing forth, aspires to the love of God. When the aesthetic is experienced erotically, artistic creation becomes symbolic. The enjoyment of beauty is similar to enamorment of beautiful flesh and proves to be the initial step in erotic ascent… The symbol is the creative principle of love, Eros the leader.” Ivanov, “Thoughts about Symbolism,” ed. and trans. Peterson, Anthology, 182. Ivanov’s essay was first published in Trudy i dni, 1912 (No. 1), 3-10; Peterson 219n.

[146] The courtship and marriage of Blok and Mendeleeva and its subsequent breakdown in the face of a rival, fellow Symbolist poet Andrei Bely, occupied the attention of St. Petersburg for several years. For more on Solov’ev and Blok, see Samuel Cioran, Vladimir Solov’ev and the Knighthood of the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977); Olga Matich, Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia’s Fin-de-siècle (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); Avril Pyman, The Life of Aleksandr Blok: Volume I; The Distant Thunder, 1880-1908 (Oxford, London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); and Kornei Chukovsky, Alexander Blok as Man and Poet, trans. Diana Lewis Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor (1924 in Russian; trans. and repr. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982).

[147] Peterson, History, 54.

[148] Howard, 303. The engraving forms the frontispiece of Architetture e prospettive dedicate alla Maesta di Carlo Sesto Imperador de’ Romani, 1740.

[149] The letter was dated October 24, 1898, quoted in translation in John E. Bowlt, “Theater of Reason, Theater of Desire,” Bowlt, ed., Theater of Reason/Theater of Desire: The Art of Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst (Castagnola, Italy: Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, 1998), 39.

[150] Buckle notes, “The design of a crowned, double-headed eagle enclosed in a wreath, [was] recognizably taken from the embroidered hanging in a room of the Russian ‘Kremlin’ at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900.” Buckle, Diaghilev, 92. Benois designed the catalogue, and Bakst decorated the exhibition rooms.

[151] Merezhkovsky included a translation of The Raven in his book of poetry, Symbols, published 1892. The Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont also made translations of Poe’s works in the early 1890s. Peterson, History, 14, 20. Bowlt notes that “Bakst began to collect Japanese colored engravings, including Hokusai, Siamese artifacts (in the wake of the St. Petersburg performances by the Royal Ballet Troupe of the Siamese Court in 1900) and other knick-knacks, including a stuffed raven à la Edgar Allan Poe.” “Theater of Reason,” 38.

[152] Beaumont, The Sleeping Princess Part Two, 9.

[153] Anonymous translation, http://www.rosiamar.nm.ru/skazki.html.

[154] Peterson, History, 74.

[155] Unpublished translation from the Russian by Kirsten Lodge.

[156] Levinson, Designs, 16.

[157] The Scene V pieces were purchased by Richard Buckle for ₤900 and donated to the V&A Theatre Collection, London. Film footage from 1935-36 at the JRDD-NYPL confirms the use of Bakst’s Scene V backdrop in Aurora’s Wedding, performed by members of the de Basil company. Call number *MGZHB 4-1896.

[158] Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 179 (backdrop), and 181 (side legs and pelmet).

[159] Howard, 303.

[160] The French royal architect Charles de Wailly (1728-1796) designed the interior of the Comédie Française and the Théâtre de l’Odéon. There is a connection between de Wailly and Russian architects of which Bakst could possibly have known: Ivan Starov, the most influential architect in the transition from the baroque to neoclassical style in Russia, and Vasilii Bazhenov studied in de Wailly’s Paris workshop during the 1760s and assimilated his neoclassical aesthetic. De Wailly himself was commissioned to design the main façade and much of the interior of the Sheremetev summer residence in Kuskovo, north of Moscow. See William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

[161] The fountain was a symbol linked with the Lilac Fairy in the original production, though no fountains appeared in The Sleeping Princess. In Petipa’s scenario for The Sleeping Beauty, translated from the first edition of the libretto, he specifies that after Aurora’s finger-prick, “in the depth of the stage a fountain is illuminated with a magic light and the Lilac Fairy appears in the fountain. ‘Be consoled’, she says to the despairing parents: ‘your daughter is sleeping and will sleep for a hundred years….’ The fairy waves her wand in the direction of the castle and all these groups on the threshold and on the staircase suddenly fall asleep, as if stunned. Everything falls asleep, including the flowers and the splashes of the fountain.” Wiley, 330. For Pavlova’s production in 1916 Clustine asked Bakst for a fountain: “On one side of the stage there should be a grotto, with water falling from above, forming a kind of curtain, behind which hides the Good Fairy to appear when the water stops flowing.” Schouvaloff, Bakst: Theatre Art, 179.

[162] The Sleeping Princess program lists twelve Ladies of the Court and twelve Dignitaries, but no Mazurka Men and Girls. The Sotheby’s auction lists eleven of the costumes for the Twelve Mazurka Men and eight for the Twelve Mazurka Girls, and no costumes titled Ladies of the Court or Dignitaries. Thus it appears that there was only one group of twelve couples, the Mazurka Men and Girls who danced the Polacca and joined the ensemble for the Finale. Diaghilev eliminated the Sarabande.

[163] Description of Aurora’s wedding train from Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 171; Prince Charming’s second costume from Scene V ibid., 177.

[164] Mayer and Howard note as a possible model for this dress Claude Gillot’s 1721 costume design for a naiad (fig. 121), with a fish scale pattern on the skirt. However, other than the presence of fish scales, Bakst’s design bears little resemblance to the dress in terms of neckline, sleeves, and shape of skirt. Mayer, Plate 426; Howard, 303.

[165] The Ballets Russes had presented the Blue Bird pas de deux several times previously: as “Firebird” in a group of diverse dances called Le Festin (1909), and as La Princesse Enchantée (1915). Bakst designed costumes for both. The Blue Bird and Princess costumes for The Sleeping Princess were designed anew.

[166] Daily Express, November 3, 1921.

[167] See Howard, 303, and Mayer, Plates 412 and 413.

[168] Sotheby, Costumes and Curtains, 173.

[169] Levinson, Designs, 18.

[170] Georgy Chulkov, “The Veil of Isis,” ed. and trans. Peterson, Russian Symbolists, 88. First published in Zolotoe runo, No. 5, 1908, 66-72; Peterson 212n. The Baudelaire passage is from Les Fleurs du Mal.

[171] Levinson, Designs, 10-11.

[172] S. L. Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet 1909-1929, trans. and ed. Vera Bowen, (London: Constable, 1953), 174.